A Razor's Edge
by zipscool
Summary: A team of Nano-Soldiers at the front of the counter-attack against the Ceph are unearthed by a shady organisation following Shepard's war on the Collectors. Together they will travel the galaxy to combat the growing threat of the Reapers and their puppets
1. Awaken

**I'm overextending myself and I goddamn well know it. I got two other pieces going that I really should get back to but I just can't shake this idea from my head and in my opinion these two incredible series go extremely well together. **

**A Razor's Edge**

**Chapter One: Awaken**

"**You have been selected for the prestigious honour..."**

The words resounded inside his head, echoing a dozen times over. He remembered it as though it had only been yesterday.

"**The process will be long, arduous, and some of you may not come out of it the same way you went in..."**

They had promised a lot of things. Mostly pain, they'd delivered on that one if nothing else.

"**There will be days when you will do nothing but vomit and hope to whatever deity you believe in that this day will be your last. But you will overcome..."**

They _had_ overcome. He was damn glad and even more proud to say every one of his unit – Razor Team – had made the grade.

"**Because you, ladies and gentlemen, are the best of the best..."**

They'd proved it on the numerous exercises and combat situations, each of them rising above and beyond the challenge put to them.

"**The suits will turn you into something else. Something more than human..."**

Even then, they'd never lost sight of what they were – soldiers. There to serve and defend their planet.

"**You are all that stands between us and them. Planet. Nation. **_**Home.**_** You are united here not through treaty, or truce, or even by blood, but by **_**species**_**..."**

The Ceph were brutal, they were unforgiving, and they were everywhere. They were humanity's line of defence where other methods burned in the face of the inhuman onslaught.

"**The day will come – and if nothing else men and women of Earth I assure you that the day **_**will**_** come – when the inhuman scourge looks at each of you not as something to be destroyed – but something to be **_**feared...**_**"**

They annihilated any inhuman warrior in their path, trapped and destroyed their machines with precise teamwork, and burned through areas too heavily infected with the alien virus for ordinary humans to manoeuvre through.

"**We will take back our home one goddamn step at a time! On the beaches, the cities, the countryside, the jungles, the deserts, and the caps! You will flush the enemy out wherever it may reside..."**

The fighting was much less glorious than it was described. Numerous surgical strikes against key locations or structures, guerrilla operations in burnt-out cities and blasted landscapes, very rarely were they ever among anyone but others like them.

"**It will not stop just there my friends oh no! This is jus t the start! The past three years have shown us that we are not alone in this universe. Our lives previously spent in blissful ignorance have ended. We must be prepared in the event of another threat..."**

He remembered it all so vividly, the propaganda – even when it was obvious that humanity was on the cusp of victory, posters, radio and television broadcasts (where such luxuries were still available) discussing and exaggerating the Ceph threat were all too common. He felt himself swimming inside his own head, and became suddenly aware that he was dreaming. Sifting through the memories that ended at...

Yes. He remembered indeed. He shut his eyes and let it flow into his thoughts. He and his team had been mustered for the assault on the Ceph home base, the team led by the one designated 'Prophet', a man shrouded in myth and legend, some of which ranged from awe-inspiring – like taking on an entire army atop a Ceph ship that emerged in Central Park – to simply absurd – such as coming back from the dead.

They numbered in the hundreds. Men and women from all different nations, prepared to deal the final blow to the enemy. Of the three and a half thousand Nano-warriors who had existed as of 2026, barely half that could be gathered for the attack, the rest were still scattered across the globe maintaining order, hunting Ceph stragglers, or dead.

It was more than enough.

He remembered breaching the vast alien structure with his team, all five of them entered from underground while all sorts of artillery pelted the ship above ground. They cut their way through power plants, armouries, and alien factories, racing with the other nanosuit teams to the heart of the structure, where they would plant as much explosives as they could and evac, where they could simply wait and mop up anything that survived.

Whether or not they succeeded or not, he didn't know, he and his team had been attacked in an ambush, he'd been too preoccupied with the Devastator to know how his team had fared, he wished them well, and hoped they'd survived. The thought made him wonder – was he dead? Was this the afterlife? It was a pretty pitiful place if it was – left alone in darkness, just remembering your life, would he be doing this over and over again? He'd probably go mad, no this couldn't be it, it just –

"... waking... -ed-team... -orm the Dire..."

'_Hm?'_

He gasped as he felt two thunderous jolts in his chest. He gasped, just managing to draw a quick breath before another similar impact resounded through his body.

"-ke up Cap. We ain't done yet."

He recognised that voice. It couldn't be... Could it?

Another jolt forced the breath from his body, and he became acutely aware that he was freezing cold, so damn cold.

Another jolt, more pain, he'd hoped that had ended for a moment, then realised that he was kidding himself 'the pain never stops' his drill instructor had told him a long time ago, it looked like he was proven correct. Another, final, agonising thump and Captain Daniel Cutting opened his eyes.

The first thing he realised was that he was in a big glass tube, filled with some kind of clear fluid, not water, there was more resistance when he moved his arm – or maybe that was just him. The next thing he noticed was that he was still in his suit, as evidenced by his visor heads up display making itself visible, although it seemed like it was getting some sort of interference.

"_**Checking vitals. Running diagnostics... User functional."**_ His suit chimed. He shivered involuntarily, he'd never gotten used to that voice, particularly when it sounded like it actually came from _inside _his head.

"Hey Cap. As they say, welcome back to the land of the living." There was a slight shake in the tone, but it was unmistakable. He looked to his left and saw Second Lieutenant Claire Underwood grinning at him. She was out of her nanosuit, wearing a strange uniform and her naturally red hair was beginning to grow back, Daniel found himself wondering what she'd look like when it grew out fully. He barely nodded in acknowledgement before casting his eyes around to better grasp his location. He was definitely in some sort of facility, though nothing like he'd ever seen before; the people were dressed in a similar outfit to Claire's.

'_Just how long have I been out?'_ he asked himself.

"Alright, I'm sure you've got a lot of questions – none of which _I _can answer I'm afraid – gotta leave that to Director Dunn. Nah, I'm mostly here to make sure you don't freak out or something. You... _We_... Have been gone a long time Cap, I still can't get my head around it" she chuckled and glanced away for a moment "Though honestly, it was only a couple of weeks ago that they thawed me out so I guess I've got an excuse. Heh." She paused and looked back at Daniel.

"Listen, I'm not really supposed to be here too long, just to get you to calm down but... I want you to know that we all made it out okay. What's more... We _won._.." she took a breath, then turned to leave.

"Talk to you soon Cap, we'll all have a _lot _to discuss I'm sure." With that said, she walked out of Daniel's field of vision, leaving him in the care of the dozen or so personnel who he assumed were tasked with keeping him alive. He felt slightly touched that someone seemed to care so much for his own wellbeing.

'Processing' as they called it took the better part of two hours, during that time; Daniel tried regaining as much control of his own body as possible. He was still stiff, and the staff had said it'd take at least a day or two of regular exercises to get him back to his former mobility, other than that he was fine. He was currently sat on the bed in what he assumed was a patient's room, wearing a uniform similar to what Claire and everyone else was fitted with. He curled and uncurled his bare hand repeatedly; it felt strange feeling the air on his skin after spending so much time in the nanosuit. He felt almost naked without it, and began to wonder if he'd ever don it again. His mind wandered back to what Claire had said almost immediately. She'd said the others were here, but only she had come to see him, why was that? Captives? No, nothing he'd seen in the body language of Claire or anyone so far had indicated that that was the case, and he silently berated himself for even considering such a ridiculous assumption. Some of the personnel had said that he'd need to go through exercises to regain the full control of his body again, were the rest of his squad doing the same? Why wasn't Claire? He slapped himself on the head and chided himself again; she'd told him that she'd been around for at least two weeks.

Daniel sighed, evidently being comatose or asleep or whatever had taken a toll on his intellect as well as his physical being. He remembered reading an article in a magazine arguing that 'cryostasis' could potentially cause brain damage, and wasted a few moments wondering if that could be the case before dismissing the thought. He heard the door hiss and a thin, elderly man stood by the open portal carrying some sort of chart, he ushered in – and Daniel had never before been so glad to see them – his team. Claire headed the group of four up, an 'I-know-more-than-you-sir' smirk plastered to her face that usually went with some sort of _hilarious_ joke she'd pull in the next five minutes. Master Sergeant Aakash Kuruvilla followed immediately behind, a friendly smile on his face, which told him immediately that Claire was up to something if nothing else; the two had been partners in crime since they first met. Corporals Aleska Ratajczyk and Eoin Carroll stepped in seconds later. All looked healthy and in reasonably good spirits, and despite being told, it still warmed him to see them all again.

"Hey Cap. Brought the rest of the squad along, thought you'd appreciate the company of old friends." Claire was the first to speak of course, and she wasn't wrong.

"Yeah, though honestly, whether or not Claire here had gathered us up, we'd have dropped by anyway, even if we had to sneak in to do it." Aakash grinned at him and Daniel reminded himself that his right and left hands were up to something he didn't know about. However he had more pressing issues than a practical joke. He had questions and wanted answers. Stat. But before he could so much as open his mouth, Aleska cut him off.

"We know you have questions sir and we will answer in time, but they said you should be eased into things. Rushing would be..." she paused, checking her grasp on the English language "inadvisable."

"I don't know about you lot, I'm _still _not over it. Fuckin' messed is what it is." Eoin muttered to himself, his brogue thick and his temperament seemingly guarded as ever. What he'd said made Daniel even more curious – what could possibly be so potentially damaging that his own team would hide it from him?

"Earlier. When I was still in that... tank. You said we'd won, that we succeeded." Daniel spoke, looking at his team for confirmation.

"Oh yeah, we won alright. I can't wait to see your face when they finally break the news to you." Claire smirked, then turned to Aakash "Hey Aak, what time is it?" Aakash's face lit up like a lightbulb.

"Dunno, let me check..." He looked at his wrist for a few moments and moved his fingers like he was interacting with something... Then his arm was encased in orange. Daniel reeled.

"What the fuck?" he yelled in surprise, backing away as if the NCO had performed an act of sorcery in front of him.

"That was five minutes Cap; don't tell me you didn't see it coming." Claire leaned on Aakash's shoulder, grinning like a Cheshire. At that moment in time, were he not so surprised, Daniel would have liked nothing more than to see that look wiped violently off her pixie face.

"I– I never– Claire–" Daniel sputtered like an old car engine, trying vainly to find the right words, as it was, he seemed incapable of any coherent speech. The door hissed as it opened, and another figure entered the room, dressed smartly in a suit that lacked a tie, yet seemed strangely fit wihout. The man looked to be in his mid thirties, short, cropped blonde hair and unnaturally good-looking – Daniel had seen enough before to know cosmetics when he saw them – and roving sea-green eyes that seemed to notice all before him. He cast a disapproving eye over Aakash, who was suppressing a laugh and trying to hide the glowing device on his forearm.

"Master Sergeant Kuruvilla _what_ did I say about bringing anything that... unsubtle... to your CO's attention?" Aakash sighed and motioned towards Claire, who was trying her best (and failing miserably) to look innocent. The newcomer raised an eyebrow at them both.

"We'll discuss this later you two, and I feel I ought to remind you that technically speaking, you're no longer part of any sort of armed forces branch. If the idea appealed to me – and I might add that it's looking marginally more attractive than it did before I entered the room Ms. Underwood – I could have you executed and dismiss it as merely defending my facility from a roving band of marauders. Generally they don't tend to show up on Citadel databases so the explanation wouldn't be difficult to accept." He took a cigarette from a pack inside a suit pocket before remembering he was in a patient's room and thought better of it, stowing it back deep into his suit.

"In fact, the only reason that doesn't seem so much like an option to me at present is due to the –"

"Suits, I got that when you woke and explained it to me _personally_ Director." Claire interrupted, unnaturally coldly, and turned her head slightly towards Daniel, rolling her eyes comically. The newcomer did not seem amused.

The 'Director' strolled towards Daniel's bed, and extended an arm towards him.

"Director Elias Dunn. I've been told a lot about you Captain Cutting, most of it rather flattering if the Lieutenant is to be believed." He glanced briefly at Claire, who seemed to have shied away ever so slightly. Strange, but Daniel didn't dwell on it, he concentrated on Dunn for a moment before taking his arm in a light, but wary embrace.

"I'd introduce myself but you seem to know already. That and I'm still not entirely sure _what exactly the fuck is going on._" Dunn didn't seem taken aback by his tone, he probably expected it.

"Yes. I am truly sorry for the shock Captain. I had intended for your transition to be somewhat... smoother..." He paused, glancing at the two jokers, who seemed to be looking anywhere but at him.

"Unfortunately it seems a certain pair has jumped things along rather more quickly than I had planned. You see Mr. Cutting, you have a lot of catching up to do, and truthfully, even your team doesn't quite know how _much_ you've missed in the time you were frozen." That perked everyone up.

"We've told them the gist of things, and had all but Corporal Carroll here – who was thawed just three days before you were mind – outfitted with the most basic equipment you can get in today's society. However we've purposefully neglected to tell you _everything_. Hopefully you'll understand as I go along. In fact, it is my hope that you and your team will be working directly under me and my supervisors in rather high places by the end of the week when all of you should be fully restored and functional. We've got plenty planned for your team and those suits, but we'll talk business after I fill you all in."

With that, he began – with the assistance of a multitude of screens, images that seemed to appear out of thin air – to explain the current situation. It almost seemed like a wild fantasy for a moment, aliens, faster-than-light travel, other species (_friendly_ species, with their own histories that spanned longer than humans had walked on Earth much to Daniel's awe), the Citadel. Daniel knew that even if he had a whole year to study he'd never know even an iota as much as the man in front of him did. It was all just so overwhelming.

Eventually, he was finished speaking, and waited for the team to speak up. None did, each was as awestruck as the other, and none could find any words to relay how they felt. Director Dunn sighed to himself.

"I should have guessed it wouldn't be as easy as that – like bringing vorcha into a sewer and asking them _not _to eat anything. I guess you can come in now, it'll spook 'em into saying something – _anything_ if nothing else." He spoke loudly. The door opened, and Daniel saw his first alien.

It was a strange thing to be sure, like something he'd seen on films, yet unlike in the movies, there was no strange pixilation, or sheen, or anything indicating that this was a computer generated image (that is if they even _used _computers in this time any more). This was one-hundred percent real.

The alien stood a little taller than most humans, around seven feet, with bony, avian features and a light-grey carapace, with what looked like mandibles around what Daniel assumed was a mouth, strange red tribal markings decorated its facial features. It was dressed in a blue form-fitting (or it certainly looked form-fitting, though Daniel hardly considered himself an expert on alien anatomy) suit. To his and his team's great surprise, the alien seemed to chuckle at their reactions.

"Well that's one way to great a guy. Good day. I'm Executive Syglar Kryik, though feel free to call me 'Director' Kryik seeing as how I effectively run this company while my friend here elopes around the galaxy _personally_ overseeing our projects." It spoke jovially, good-naturedly, were it not for the obvious issue of appearance, Daniel had no doubt he would have warmed to him immediately.

"I'm not sure if you've noticed in that short introduction but 'Director' Kryik here has been after my post for quite some time. I'm beginning to wonder if he'll ever get over his fear of discovery and actually hire those assassins to kill me so he can _reluctantly_ but graciously accept the Board's unanimous decision to place him in the seat." Director Dunn spoke with a wide grin on his face. He walked over to the alien and grasped his hand in a firm handshake, the alien – Kryik, responded in kind.

"I'm sure I'll get to it eventually Mr. Dunn, for now, assuming your responsibilities – which I might add are piling up with each day – is enough for me. The bonus in pay for taking on said responsibilities is a nice touch too though." The alien replied light-heartedly, and Daniel could almost see a grin grace its avian features.

Kryik turned to the human team gathered at the bed before him, none had spoken since Dunn had started talking. He looked at the humans in turn before turning back to his colleague.

"Hey Dunn, call me slow but I don't think these people have seen a turian before." Dunn smirked, and Aakash barked out a laugh once, a clear sign of good humour from him. Kryik looked at him and gestured with a hand.

"Well at least one of them can speak, I was kinda hoping the others would have regained the use of their tonsils – or tongues, never sure with you bunch – for starters it'd make communication a whole lot easier." Dunn nodded in agreement, and opened his mouth to speak when a muffled crack of thunder echoed and a slight shudder rippled through the room. Dunn glanced at Kryik, who shrugged.

"Don't look at me; you're the one who authorises the weapons testing in these places."

"That's just it. This _isn't_ one of those places." Dunn murmured to himself worriedly, he brought up another one of those glowing devices on his arm and appeared to cycle through several programs Daniel couldn't make heads or tails of. His eyes widened at the most recent cycle.

"No..." he whispered. "That can't..." He shut his eyes, when he reopened them, they were focused and alert.

"I was hoping that it'd be smooth sailing. Unfortunately, as ever this far into the Terminus Systems it seems said sailing is a luxury only the extremely wealthy or the extremely secretive can afford and it looks like we weren't secretive enough. I am truly sorry for this but you five are going to need to suit up immediately, exercises and tests be damned. Shame as I'd really like to familiarise myself with those suits' capacity but evidently that's going to have to wait until we're somewhere less easy to locate than this place.

"There are several shuttles located in the facility, Security and the other staff will guide you to them, they've all been briefed – your safety and the preservation of those suits are of the utmost import, if anyone you see fails to comply with that then they're either hostile or negligent and should be dealt with as such. Me and Kryik must attend to other matters before we evacuate, we'll meet you at a nearby station – provided fate is kind." With that he turned smartly on his heel and left the room, Kryik followed suit, before motioning left with a finger. A distant explosion shook the facility again, and spurred Daniel's previously inactive team into action, Lieutenant Underwood's steely visage replaced Claire's playful grin, and Daniel saw himself gazing upon soldiers. Corporal Ratajczyk helped him up from his bed and Master Sergeant Kuruvilla was at the door, ready in case anything hostile should enter, with Corporal Carroll at his back in case the Sergeant let anything slip past.

Underwood snapped Daniel a crisp salute when he was standing (supported by Corporal Ratajczyk), and spoke clearly and fluidly those words he'd never thought he'd hear again.

"Orders Captain?"

**And that's the first part; our heroes are introduced to the world of tomorrow. I quite liked writing the last few pages, Kryik in particular.**

**For starters: timeline. I'd planned for it to be set sometime before the first game and have Razor Team link up with Shep and co. on the citadel during Sovereign's attack. Unfortunately I got about halfway through planning before realising that everything I put down to make that happen was absolutely **_**retarded**_** (seriously, I had one idea of having them flung through a mass relay a la Ilos and then remembered that the Mako barely made it as is). As a result, I've decided that this will be set a little before Shepard's trial and will culminate during the Reaper invasion of ME3, hopefully enough info will be released by the time it's at that point for me to add canon changes to the overall plan.**

**References abound, for starters: Director Dunn, not sure how well known this is but Nomad – the player character from the first game – is named 'Jake Dunn'. I figured naming him the director of the organisation dealing with the nanosuits would be a fitting homage to a guy whose fate I'd rather know about. I enjoyed Crysis 2 as much as the first but seriously, where the hell were Nomad, Psycho and Rosenthal? There was barely any mention of them at all save a line or two **_**hinting**_** that they might be **_**dead**_**. I tell you, what a slap in the face. Captain Daniel Cutting is also a reference to another great game, I'll see if you lot can't guess it, if not then I'll probably spill in the next chapter, or the one after who knows, it's a similar story with the name of their team. There's a couple more references in there which are hopefully more obvious to spot, I won't insult your collective intellects by naming them as you should be able to call them out yourselves.**

**Until next time folks. As usual, 'read and review' would be greatly appreciated – they don't call it 'Constructive' criticism for nothing.**


	2. The Mission

**I'm still reeling over the fact that I got three reviews in the day after I published that first chapter. I'm touched. Really, I am.**

**A thanks to those of you who favourited this, and to the semi-anonymous review Invader jrek; It's explained in Crysis 2 that the Ceph originate from Earth, but their ship in the first likely indicates that they'd have at the least reached space flight. So chances are they'd have colonies like the other races too right? I've been toying with the idea of placing some of their colonies in some lesser known areas of the universe (hell, maybe even close to dark space), so as to your question: will there be Ceph? I see no reason why not. It won't be soon though, setting is still being established and questions regarding Director Dunn and Co. need to be answered.**

**This chapter will see the introduction of Hannah Shepard (for those of you not in touch with ME as others, Hannah Shepard is Commander Shepard's mother if you choose the Spacer option in Character Creation). Hopefully you guys like the way I've chosen to portray her. The Shepard I've chosen for this fic will be default fem-Shep appearance-wise, Soldier class, and Spacer and Sole Survivor background.**

**With that said, as they say: 'On with the show':**

**A Razor's Edge**

**Chapter Two: The Mission**

To his immense pride, despite their new surroundings and the news that they'd been effectively asleep for more than a century, Daniel Cutting's soldiers exited the chamber and secured their hallway unarmed in the time it took to blink. That being said, they'd be fish in a barrel if anyone with any sort of firearm entered, and while he was fully aware of his men and women's hand-to-hand capabilities, he couldn't be sure whether the raiders were human or not. For instance, Master Sergeant Kuruvilla had the left entrance, but the person who entered could potentially be an alien that towered well above him, multi-limbed and with enough raw power to snap Aakash's bones like mere twigs. Of course it could work the opposite way as well; the alien to enter could be barely half his height and as fragile as glass, however this didn't tend to be much of a trend even with human bandits (and he'd encountered plenty during the Ceph War in city ruins).

As luck had it, nothing entered from that side, and the team was clear to go, a dull thud resounded in the distant corners of the facility, signalling that more explosives had been detonated. Lab personnel rushed seemingly in all directions; a great many were human but there were several non-humans present too, a couple of the same species as Kryik, a slim, amphibian alien which reminded Daniel very much of frogs or toads, and a couple that loomed over the rest in dull red armour, wielding enormous guns with large, bony plates over their heads, they looked like bipedal rhinos to Daniel – only lacking horns. The 'rhinos' seemed like they were headed towards the sounds of explosions – probably security or mercenaries.

The lab personnel – while generally panicked – managed to point Razor team in the direction of their suits in Sector 3 of the eastern wing, which had not been stowed away on the escape vessels yet. The story was that the eastern wing was one of the first to be hit by the raiders, and that contact was limited to a couple of security teams that happened to be checking the suits out themselves when the attack began. They reported to be holding fast for the moment, but they'd begun bringing up something called 'krogan' and 'biotics'. The worried tone in which those two terms had been said prompted Razor to make all due haste, though Daniel's muscles protested viciously to sudden movement, and he still had to be supported by Corporal Ratajczyk.

They'd just entered the eastern wing, into the mess hall when they met the first raider; it was about human-sized, with a helmet, though something was off about it. For starters, its head – even with the helmet – seemed abnormally large, Daniel assumed it to be alien and therefore for his team to observe before attempting to engage – not that they would. For starters, it was leaning against a table in open space, and a smooth, slightly battered rifle of some sort lay across its lap. It was clearly waiting for someone – or something, judging by the way it shifted its head from side to side occasionally. A minute passed and it was clear that the raider wasn't going to budge – if Razor simply tried rushing it, the raider would just have to bring its rifle up, and it'd be in a rather comfortable position to gun down half of the squad, they were fast, but – despite what other soldiers had joked – nanosuit warriors were far from invincible, especially outside of the suits that gave them such a reputation.

He studied the environment, looking for options. Going around was out of the question what with all the rubble blocking the hallway, and he knew full well that they had neither the equipment or the time to dig through it. The only way forward was through this mess hall, and there was precious little cover available on their side – probably why the raider had chosen to sit at the opposite end of the hall, all it'd need to do was duck and roll and he'd have overturned or broken dinner tables between him and anything that meant him harm. They needed a plan to oust him, maybe if they convinced him that they were raiders themselves... Daniel shook his head. That'd never work; for starters, their clothing alone would give them away, secondly –

Claire shot by him, dodging past the open doorway and stopping at the other side, the alien turned its head sharply, catching the movement. It brought up the rifle and watched the doorway for a few moments before cautiously creeping towards it, crouched a little lower with its shoulders hunched in case it needed to take evasive manoeuvres. Much as he wanted to slap her on the head for her impulsiveness he had to hand it to the Lieutenant for her thinking: in her present garb; there wasn't much chance she or anyone in Razor would be taken for anything more than another facility worker – and therefore, not much of a threat. He turned to Aakash and Eoin, signalling for them to prepare to take down the approaching target. It was probably overkill but until he knew more about the different intelligent species populating the universe, he'd rather play it safe.

The alien was barely the quarter of a metre from the doorway when Razor struck. Aakash spun round from the corner crouched low; Eoin followed just a step behind. The alien couldn't bring its gun down in time and Aakash delivered a vicious one-two jab to its torso. The alien doubled up and clutched its chest with its free hand, the arm with the rifle hanging limp, where Eoin took hold of said limb and twisted sharply. The alien released a guttural cry of pain and swung its empty hand blindly, Aakash managed to block the clumsy attack and – without thinking – gave it a quick uppercut to the chin of the alien's helmet, which succeeded in both stunning the alien and damaging Aakash's own hand. Eoin got behind the still reeling alien, grabbed it and hoisted it into the air, slamming it head-first into the ground. A sickening crack echoed throughout the mess hall and the alien moved no more. Razor gathered around the body, and Daniel – overcome by curiosity – removed its helmet.

The thing was startlingly ugly, with a large head, two pairs of eyes and generally scrunched-up features; its skin was an unpleasant brown tone. Blood leaked from the left corner of its mouth, and began to pool on the floor. Eoin tapped his chin thoughtfully.

"You know, that thing was surprisingly light." He said, still observing the corpse, though his gaze seemed to have glazed over slightly, as though he was looking through it, not at it.

Indeed, were it not for the size of its head and the face, it could almost be mistaken for a human. Daniel thought back on things he heard as a child regarding aliens – how many argued that any life outside earth could not possibly be bipedal or humanoid in appearance because it would contradict some laws of evolution or something. Evidently these people must have been surprised when they'd encountered the aliens of the 'Citadel', Daniel reflected.

A distant explosion brought Razor back into reality.

"Carroll, take that weapon and see what else you can find on him, we'll move out as soon as you're done." Daniel commanded. He sent Aakash and Claire to the entrances of the mess hall just in case any raider came looking for their friend. It took less than a minute for Eoin to scour the corpse of anything that seemed useful, the inventory consisted of the rifle, a pistol, several clip things that seemed to fit into the weapons and a couple of strange disk devices. Claire took the pistol, Aakash took the disks and was about to begin fiddling with them until Daniel told him to stop – for all they knew the things might be several-megaton bombs or something.

Razor continued on through the eastern wing, which had evidently taken the brunt of the attack if all the debris and the numerous corpses were any indication. They had yet to encounter any significant number of raiders as of yet, the few they'd come across Razor had been able to avoid contact with – Daniel reasoned that there was no need for them to figure they were headed into enemy territory, else they might catch on that something valuable was still in there. They'd passed the bodies of security and raider alike, and as such, all of Razor was now armed with a rifle or shotgun of some sort with the exception of Daniel who still couldn't move on his own much and Aleska who still had to support him, though she now carried a rather large pistol taken from the body of one of the 'rhino' aliens.

Finally, after what seemed like an age of hiding, sneaking and looting bodies, Razor came across Sector 3, and already they could hear the telltale cracks and pops of gunfire resounding from deep within the area. Daniel ordered Razor to advance in a loose formation down the halls, moving as quickly as possible while also trying simultaneously to be as quiet as possible. The gunfire grew louder as the men and women of Razor passed debris, pock-marked walls where dozens of rounds had been fired, and corpse-strewn rooms and corridors. The place was almost entirely white on the inside, and Aakash remarked glumly that he'd never been through a more soulless place.

The team had entered what looked like a loading bay, and suddenly the din of gunfire became just that, a few stray bullets struck the wall to the left of the doorway and Razor scrambled for cover. Claire peeked her head from behind a shelf full of crates and ducked back quickly.

"Looks like this is the place Cap. There's two groups up ahead exchanging fire, I'd bet it's these raiders and Security. Doesn't look like they've noticed us yet, if we get a bit closer, we can gun them down without them knowing the first thing about it." She spoke clearly but quietly and Daniel nodded, then, giving a series of shaky hand-signals, ordered Razor to advance and take up optimal firing positions and gave Claire temporary command. He ordered Aleska to go too despite her protests that Daniel still needed her to get around, to which he reluctantly pulled rank (in spite of the fact that he wasn't entirely sure if he still held the rank of Captain) to force the Corporal to move. Daniel managed to force himself into a hole in one of the crate storage shelves so as not to be seen by any possible reinforcements and waited for the shooting to stop.

It took less than two minutes.

"Seriously though Cap, those arseholes didn't even know we had the drop on 'em til our guns wouldn't fire anymore, and by that time we'd taken out more than half." Claire boasted, her Australian accent more prominent than ever as she propped herself on top of the corpses of a dead krogan. The alien almost turned the table on the Lieutenant – surprising her when it quite literally _charged_ at her, Aakash had managed to take out a kneecap (or what Daniel assumed was a kneecap), which had stumbled it, allowing Claire to finish the thing with a burst of fire.

The rest of the fighting from there had been cleanup, with the previously pressured Security teams advancing forward and mopping up the raiders who found themselves surrounded by two dedicated fighting forces. The leader of the Security team, another krogan by the name of Jurdon Wrill, gave the humans a curt greeting and had one of his counterparts lead Razor to their nanosuits while he in his own words 'searched for more victims', Daniel had a feeling that they'd see him later on, though on which side he wasn't sure. The krogan seemed an unnaturally aggressive species, and the way they fought reminded him eerily of the Ceph Devastators; hulking, brutal, and destructive without equal. Daniel learned from the krogan assigned to them that Wrill was a member of a mercenary group known as the Blood Pack, and that they'd been hired fairly recently in response to some increased pirate activity.

'_Space Pirates. Who'd have thought?'_ Daniel chuckled to himself.

"Hm? Something up sir?" Aleska asked him curiously. Daniel had become so used to her help that he'd almost forgotten that she was still lugging him around.

"No, nothing, just a little thought that amused me." Daniel shook his head as they continued towards their suits.

"In there humans. We found a technician huddling in there when we were attacked who'll probably help you into those suits of yours. Can't see what all the fuss is about though; looks even flimsier than your normal armour." The krogan grunted and left them to rejoin the rest of Security back in the loading bay.

The fitting took the better part of ten minutes, and through regular thirty second intervals nervous Security personnel entered the chamber to inquire whether or not they were ready to leave. The technician was growing steadily more impatient than anything else by the time the ninth minute had ended and was happy to finally be free of the annoyance, though Daniel suspected that the prospect of having a fair number of well-armed soldiers and mercenaries accompanying him to safety had some part in his temperament as well.

Daniel stepped down and stumbled almost immediately, he cursed as Claire and Eoin barred his fall, and Claire hoisted his arm over her shoulder.

"I think I'm gonna need a bit more time." Daniel muttered darkly. Claire just nodded her head, though behind her visor he could feel her grinning. Daniel made a mental note to remember her attitude towards her CO's disability for future situations, though he knew that all she'd need to do was flash him that brilliant smile and it'd –

Okay that wasn't too professional. For starters she was always smiling, so unless she found a way to surgically alter her face (and he was all but certain that there were methods in this crazy universe to achieve such a procedure) he doubted that her features could get any flashier. He was about to consider another unrelated thought when gunfire sparked ahead, evidently more raiders had come looking for their friends.

"**Cloak engaged"** the voice rang in his skull. He sat himself gently down, knowing that even with his suit on, at present he'd be in no condition to fight, so he sat back, kept an eye on his suit's heads-up display and energy readings and watched his squad go to work.

The first raider fell to a shot from the krogan who'd led Razor to their suits, the next casualty was one of those four-eyed aliens who took a slug at point blank range when Aakash materialised in front of it and unsympathetically unloaded into the raider. He retreated when fire turned on him, the Sergeant switching to Armour mode, and steadily falling back while continuing to fire as bullets bounced off his suit's hardened outer layer. Aleska engaged her suit's power mode and grabbed two large crates, tossing them at the raiders, the first missed entirely but the other slammed into a human raider, crushing his ribcage and killing him as the bones splintered and were forced into his soft inner organs. She dived into cover when several guns turned on her following the Corporal's performance.

Eoin stood stoically above the Security team like a hero of old, letting the incoming fire rebound off his suit's armour while he unloaded his rifle into anything that showed its face. He hit far less often than he missed, but the psychological value of his action cowed some raiders into uncertainty, while simultaneously bolstering the Security team's resolve. Wrill suddenly stood up alongside Eoin, roared at one of his subordinates and violently backhanded him across the face, shattering the krogan's lower jaw.

"These _humans_ fight better than you filthy varren do! The Void take all of you cowardly wretches, I'll finish this myself and find some better fighters." With that said, he charged, shotgun flaring and reaping a life whenever it barked.

The krogan of his pack – even the one with the broken jaw still streaming blood to Daniel's amazement – leapt from cover and followed their battlemaster, in the space of a minute it was over, and the raiders were little more than broken, bloody corpses. He'd seen the krogan in action not fifteen minutes ago but their martial prowess still stunned Daniel, and he wondered briefly if the nanosuit's power mode could match their raw strength.

The attack was not without losses though, two krogan from Wrill's pack had died, so had three of the human security officers and the technician who'd fitted Razor's suits – a bullet had ricocheted twice and struck him in the temple, splattering the crate he was hiding behind with gore. The surviving security officers pieced themselves together to fight their way to the shuttle, with the krogan stopping to briefly take check of their weapons and ammunition before leading the way. Daniel was about to try to pick himself up off the floor when the suit chimed in:

"**Threat detected."**

The doorway to the loading bay opened again, more raiders and another alien appeared – this one female, with blue skin, strange appendages on the back of its head and a strangely alluring physique. Unfortunately its beauty was marred by the twisted visage of seething fury that occupied its face.

The alien roared and erupted into an unearthly blue glow, and then Daniel's world erupted. The krogan were lifted into the air by the glowing alien while its comrades took pot shots at the flailing mercenaries, three were killed almost instantly as their shields failed them and bullets ruptured their armour and shredded their bodies. The blue-skinned alien pulled its arms back and in another display of this strange power, pushed forward. The krogan _flew_, some landing among the crates, others skidding across the floor, some pushed themselves onto their feet, but others did not.

Aakash cloaked and re-materialised to the alien's left but she caught the movement and flung her arm towards him. The Master Sergeant was surrounded by that blue glow and was propelled off his feet, slamming into a storage shelf where he lay still, his vitals displayed that he was still alive but unconscious. Aleska fired two shots from her heavy pistol, her shields seemed to fail but the alien remained unharmed, some sort of back-up force field protected her from further harm, or it was another element of that power she displayed. The alien rounded on Aleska and fired two glowing orbs at the Corporal from her hands, the swirling spheres seemed to home in on her and she jumped, managing to leap over the closest, the next however, followed her, struck her, Aleska fell to the floor, crying out in agony, her vital signs became suddenly erratic before stabilising as the pain overwhelmed her and she joined Aakash in slumber. Eoin was lifted into the air much akin to the krogan, until the alien began dashing him against the ground repeatedly before flinging him across the room like a ragdoll, it seemed as though luck was on his side though; his vitals were the worst so far, but he was still alive.

The last of the raiders fell to one of the security officers, who now began to focus their fire on the blue-skinned alien who'd singlehandedly decimated more than half of Razor team and not an inconsiderable number of Blood Pack mercenaries. She reeled, the strange barrier flaring into life, but didn't fall, and instead lashed out with another two energy spheres which impacted with two human officers who fell to the floor in a spray of blood as they were ripped apart at the molecular level by the unnatural energies. Daniel saw Claire cloak and hop onto a shelf to gain a better vantage point as the alien continued unleashing sphere after sphere. Aiming her rifle at the alien's head, she uncloaked, squeezed the trigger and didn't stop until the weapon ceased firing.

The alien didn't even flinch.

Instead, it seemed to reach up towards her and pulled the crate she hid behind down to the floor with her powers, and then lifted her into the air, pulling Claire towards her and suspending her half a metre away. The alien grabbed Claire's head and tilted it to the side, studying her and the suit, curiosity lining its graceful features before it decided that it had seen enough. It pushed Claire back and made two grabbing motions, the blue glow appeared on Claire's arms, and the alien began to pull to the side, Claire gasped and began groaning in agony – the alien was trying to rip her arms from their very sockets! Daniel looked around desperately for a weapon, finally settling on a pistol much like the one Aleska had lying by one of the dead krogan mercenaries. He ignored his aching limbs as he reached for the weapon, raised it, aimed it at the alien and fired just as his energy levels bled dry and he reappeared in view, prone on the ground. The first shot bounced off of its barrier, the next followed suit. The third shot pierced the alien through the hip, the fourth merely grazed its leg, he only got two more shots before the gun _clicked_ and wouldn't fire again. The alien gasped at the sudden attack and dropped Claire, who fell to the floor groaning and trying weakly to move her arms.

The alien rounded on Daniel with vengeance ablaze in its eyes, clutching its bleeding hip with one hand, the alien pulled Daniel off the ground towards it like it had done with Claire. It reached for a holster and drew a sidearm, pushing it directly against Daniel's left thigh, Daniel knew what was coming next, and activated Armour mode with a thought just as the alien squeezed the trigger. The round deflected off of the suit's outer layer and – with nowhere else to go – exploded through the barrel of the pistol, ruining the firearm. The alien recoiled in surprise and Daniel dropped a foot before the alien regained control and lifted him back into the air, narrowing its eyes at Daniel and glancing at the suit again, it smirked to itself and let go of its wound to lift Claire with its other hand which was now slick with its strange purple blood. It held both of them an equal distance apart from each other and closed its fists, and Daniel instantly felt an overwhelming, agonising pressure. He gasped, taking several rapid breaths as the alien began slowly clenching its fists, enjoying the show of the two strangely-armoured humans suffering.

Just as Daniel felt he was about to burst like an overripe melon, a deafening bark echoed throughout the room and the alien's head exploded in a shower of visceral gore. Its corpse fell limply to the floor, and Daniel and Claire dropped too, winding themselves upon landing, still aching but still alive. Daniel craned his head from his curled position to where he thought the shot had come from and found Jurdon Wrill holding his shotgun in one hand. To say the krogan battlemaster was a mess would be an understatement, his left side was almost entirely gone, blood flowed from the gaping hole in the alien and dozens of other smaller wounds, the shock alone would surely have taken even the hardiest human out of the fight permanently – to continue fighting like that...

'_These krogan sure are terrifying creatures... Sure hope we don't have to fight any of them on our way out.' _Daniel thought to himself with a grimace just as Wrill dropped to the floor, bleeding, torn and very dead.

"He caught three of those warp attacks from that damned asari." One of his officers stated to the humans when the survivors had regrouped and Razor had come to.

"Tore him up worse than anything I've seen, but old Wrill was never one to walk away from a battlefield while an enemy still drew breath... Taking down a battle-hardened asari matriarch... Yes it was a glorious death; his name shall be inscribed on our vessel's wall of honour." The hefty alien intoned loudly, its surviving comrades murmured their approval. Daniel cocked his head.

"Your vessel? Aren't you leaving with us?" he asked.

"We were paid to protect this facility, and by extension you and those suits you wear." The krogan answered, not looking at him "I still don't see what all the fuss is about, but you fought better than those saplings." the newly promoted battlemaster pointed to the surviving human security guards – less than six were still alive, barely a quarter of their original number.

"With this attack and the evacuation – and I'm willing to bet my quad that they'll level this entire place once they're sure everyone's out – there is no facility, therefore there is no job left for... _my_ pack... We'll see you to your shuttle, but we will part ways once that is done. There are bigger battles out there somewhere and someone will be willing to pay for us to fight them." With that, the krogan stood and commanded his surviving warriors to follow him.

The journey to the escape shuttle was far more peaceful than the journey, with not a single encounter – much to the krogan's disapproval. Once Razor and the surviving guards boarded, the krogan battlemaster bade them farewell and wondered if one day they might clash with Razor, Daniel didn't give a reply, secretly hoping that such an event would never occur.

The shuttle boarded a human military vessel not ten minutes before a lengthy bombardment of the facility begun, wiping it from the universe permanently. Razor was on the bridge of the ship five minutes later.

Daniel couldn't stop himself from staring in wonder at the sight; it amazed him to think how far humanity had come since the Ceph War. The bridge was bright and bustling, but the numerous personnel moved around in an organised – almost choreographed manner, ensuring that no collisions were had and that everyone got to where they needed to be. At the centre of the bridge, standing over a holographic map of the galaxy stood a middle-aged woman with her brown hair done in a neat, tidy bun with an odd streak of grey. She would barely come up to Daniel's chest but there was an aura of authority about her that seemed to command absolute, unwavering obedience and respect. Director Dunn was at her side, as was Kryik, it was clear that there was some tension between the two, though the woman – who Daniel now assumed was the Captain or Commander of the human vessel – seemed unhappier than Dunn did, who was at least trying to smile. The Commander turned her unblinking hazel eyes on Razor team, casting a curious glance at Daniel, who was still being supported by Aleska before surveying the rest of his team.

"This is them I take it?" she asked, though it didn't sound like she was asking a question.

"Yes Hannah this is –" Dunn started before he was interrupted sharply by Commander 'Hannah'.

"_Don't _call me that. Especially not on my own damn vessel, I came here because the brass ordered me to. If it had been up to me, I'd have left you on that rock and laughed as it had gone up in flames." She seethed quietly.

"I see you're still upset." Dunn said, matter-of-factly. Commander Hannah glared at him.

"Your damn faulty intel cost me good men and women, one of whom was a damn good friend of mine. Until I see you do some serious grovelling, it'll be a long time before I even _consider_ forgiving you." The Commander growled at him. Daniel shifted uncomfortably; there was obviously bad blood between the two.

"Oh come now Hannah I've stated time and time again that if I had known about the Thresher I would gladly have reverted the transmission and tried my hardest to have found another method of cracking that pirate cove. Besides it wasn't all bad – you met Liam didn't you?" the Commander rounded on him and for a moment, Daniel was convinced that she was about to strike him. She didn't. Instead, she glared so fiercely at Director Dunn that Daniel could almost feel the venom her gaze held himself.

"I'm going to pretend I didn't hear you mention his name Dunn. The next time I do I swear to God I won't hesitate to throw you myself out the nearest airlock." The words were laced with poison, whatever had occurred with the pirates and this 'Thresher' thing, it was bad. Really bad.

"Yes I don't doubt you would. Tell me Hannah, how much can you bench press? Because the last time I saw it was something around hundred and ninety pounds – not that anyone was really paying attention to that though I can hardly blame them. If you don't mind me saying you were a ravishingly good looking young woman –" Dunn barely finished before Commander Hannah slugged him. Kryik sighed and shook his head before offering a hand to his friend, who graciously accepted.

"Okay, I know what I said there and I apologise, that was well out of place for me." He said in a much more business-like tone "I'd also like to –" he was cut off when Hannah decked him again.

"Apology accepted." She grunted to him.

"Alright... Alright I deserved that. Now if you're done venting can you let us talk business? I don't think our guests appreciate us talking history." Dunn said, wiping the blood from his jaw.

"You were the only one talking history Dunn." She replied evenly before turning back to Razor "my apologies troopers. I've heard from Mr. Kryik – and Mr. Dunn" she glanced back at him "that you had a bit of a rough awakening. Mr Dunn's company develops and researches quite a significant amount of our tech, so Alliance sent me here to come pick up his experiment." She glanced over Razor team once more "Though I have to say, I'd assumed we'd be picking up something more... inanimate than you" She turned back to Director Dunn and Kryik.

"I think before we answer that, introductions are in order don't you think Hannah? Razor Team, this is Captain Hannah Shepard, Alliance Naval Officer and mother of the hero of the most famous human in existence. Captain Shepard, this is Razor team – we'll get you up to speed momentarily." Director Dunn said in a friendly tone, unfortunately for him, Captain Shepard was having none of it and was straight to business.

"Who are they exactly? Experiments? Biotics? Androids?" The Captain asked. Dunn tilted his head, as if considering his answer before speaking.

"They're... Not something I can so readily describe to you..." he thought for a moment "Are you familiar with the Ceph Captain Shepard?" he asked. Razor team immediately perked up at the mention of the scourge of their time. Commander Shepard raised an eyebrow – Daniel wondered whether it was the question itself or the sudden formality.

"I'm well familiar with our species' history Dunn. I'm not sure what the Ceph have to do with these men and women though." She said in a steely tone.

"Oh they have everything to do with the Ceph. You might say that they had first-hand experience..." Dunn trailed off, letting the implication hang in the air.

Captain Shepard studied Razor team for a few more moments, narrowing her eyes as if to discern some minute detail.

"By that you're telling me that they've been in direct contact with the Ceph... The Ceph haven't ventured from their colonies since the clash with the Council twenty years ago. I don't think we'd send Special Forces to investigate their colonies if we didn't think an attack was imminent... That leaves..." she paused – then, to everyone's great surprise, let loose a loud bark of laughter.

"Out of all the possibilities, I'd never have thought in my wildest dreams that something like this could happen outside a vid!" Shepard calmed down a moment before casting a more relaxed eye over Razor Team again.

"Well, alright Dunn if nothing else you certainly have my attention. So I'm guessing that you have some sort of plan for them, else you'd not have gone through all the trouble of finding them and bringing them back." Shepard deduced.

"Indeed I do Hannah, and it actually rather concerns you too." Dunn paced, hands clasped together. Shepard raised an eyebrow again and glanced at him.

"In fact, I'd say it also concerns your daughter too." That drew a sharper look from the Captain.

"Hold on now Hannah, hear me out. You remember the attack on the Citadel a couple years back right? Course you do you; kinda hard to forget the place a loved one dies isn't it? Especially on such a... notable occasion such as the Geth attack on the Citadel.

"Let me start by saying – with absolute clarity – that your daughter was onto something, something big, something so immeasurably monumentally _huge_ that your daughter was labelled 'insane' for daring to speak about it upon her death – or her faked death, hell I don't know what it was. Now you know that massive ship of Saren's? Sovereign? We managed to get a clip of that in action, as well as a few parts from the wreckage. Now the Citadel Council wants us to believe that it was all a Geth attack; that Saren was so_ unbelievably_ charismatic that he managed to convince the Geth to overthrow the Council and take power for himself...

"The key word there my friend is 'unbelievably'. Come on don't tell me you actually bought into that, we're as much strangers to Geth as most people are but the Quarians are quite insistent, Geth do _not_ work with Organics – though hell I've been hearing that your daughter had one fighting alongside her on Illium about five and a bit months ago, I dunno maybe it had a few screws loose or something.

"The next thing is the flagship itself, we've analysed the wreckage countless times, we _cannot_ pinpoint a source for the stuff that thing's made of, hell we don't even know where to _start_ cause we don't know what the crap even is! All we do know is that it is dozens – maybe even hundreds or thousands of millions of years old. That is far too old for it to be a simple Geth battleship, and get this, we have a recording of your daughter's chat with the Council once the attack was over – she mentions something about a cycle and 'agents' of these things called 'Reapers', which we're guessing is what this Sovereign ship was. Now if there are more of these things out there then by god we need to prepare and we need to prepare fast, and the start of this preparation is finding these Reaper agents and neutralising them.

"Now an ordinary team of Special Forces might get the job done but hell knows they're expensive to equip and if they get caught, all it'd take is a quick sweep of the omni-tool and bam! They'd be led straight back to us, regardless of how well the guys think they wiped the things before death, trust me I've seen it done before, and lord help you if they have a Quarian because if they do you might as well put a bullet in your head and save yourself the misery of a tribunal..." He paused, taking a deep breath and closing his eyes for a moment before opening them again.

"But these guys here... They're already equipped; their suits Hannah – God I tell you it makes me wonder why the hell we didn't keep notes of that tech stored around somewhere instead of letting it get all blown up in the War. Now they'll need to be brought up to speed on the tech – how to use omni-tools effectively, heat sinks in firearms, tactics for taking down different species of aliens... And of course, I've already mentioned the suits – no one's seen the like of it in more than a century Hannah, not us, and certainly not any alien species. The way I see it, if we get these guys kitted up, we'll have a more powerful force on our hands than an entire krogan legion! Well okay maybe that's an exaggeration but it's still pretty damn powerful!

"Anyway, coming back to you – these guys, Razor team – will need a ship to get them around, a good ship with a good crew and a great commander, and naturally, when I think of those two categories I think of you and the boys and girls in the _Retribution_... So Captain... Whaddaya say?" Dunn asked.

Captain Shepard seemed conflicted, about what Daniel couldn't say. She cast an uncertain look at Razor, then at Dunn.

"The Alliance might not –" she started.

"The Alliance Brass already know. I told them my whole plan, Hackett sided with me and God bless his scars he has more pull than most among the Fleet – didn't take much pushing for others to fall into line alongside him. That being said most of them seem to think that this operation of ours is purely to hunt down and eliminate dangerous radical groups like Cerberus but whatever their line of thinking is – we have the go-ahead and we'll get the funding and all the tech we need from my company and any Alliance facility we happen across. All we need is a ship and a damn good crew – which is you my friend." Dunn finished, there was a hint of pleading in his tone, and a wild look in his eyes that made Daniel wonder if he actually believed that his team could make a real difference.

Captain Shepard shut her eyes, reopening them a moment later, when she spoke, it was clear, controlled, and was spoken in such a commanding tone that Daniel had to fight the urge to stand at attention and snap off a salute to her.

"Alright Dunn. I'm in. But on one condition – this is _my _ship. Nothing goes in or out without my knowing. You and your executive don't give me orders, you can tell me what I need to know but _I_ have the final word. Is that crystal clear?" she asked with more steel in her tone than anyone Daniel had ever known.

To his credit, Director Dunn actually smiled warmly.

"Why Hannah my dear friend. I wouldn't have had it any other way." He turned to Razor Team and clapped his hands together.

"Right then. Let's get you fitted out and up to speed proper this time. Oh! And Hannah! I've got a list of things the _Retribution_ might need for this mission. Don't worry about money I can pay for it all, we'll need to stop off at a shipwright of course, that should take us – hmm." Dunn began wandering off, rambling to himself while writing down notes on a holographic slate. Kryik caught Daniel's eye, the turian shrugged and followed his friend.

"Razor Team?" Daniel heard Shepard ask them. Daniel tried snapping to attention but his muscles failed him again and he winced as pain overtook his extremities.

"Don't stress yourself soldier, we got plenty of time to get you back to peak performance. Tell me, which one of you is in charge of this unit." Shepard asked, hands on her hips. Daniel managed to just raise an arm.

"I am Captain." Shepard eyed him keenly for a moment before curling her lip into a wry smile.

"Very well. As of this moment you are now an Acting Staff Lieutenant in the Systems Alliance Military. The rest of you will be considered Acting Corporals. If you'll wait here a moment, I'll find someone who can assign you quarters where you'll be billeted for the duration of this mission." She turned smartly on her heel and began to stroll towards an elevator before she stopped and turned slightly back to Razor.

"Oh, and welcome aboard the _Retribution._"

**That was much longer than I originally intended it to be. I could go on about a bunch of other things but it's quite late and I'm pretty dog tired.**

**I will just say quickly that there might be a bit of confusion regarding nationalities of Razor Team, so I'll just quickly list down where each member of Razor originates from:**

**Daniel Cutting – United States of America**

**Claire Underwood – Australia**

**Aakash Kuruvilla – India**

**Eoin Carroll – Ireland (Republic)**

**Aleska Ratajczyk – Poland**

**Hope you enjoyed. Read and review would be greatly appreciated, hope you guys enjoy.**

**Ciao. **


	3. The Foe

**Goddamn, just get to Uni and then I get a bloody cold. Anyway, my illness and other various misfortunes aside; a massive thanks again to the reviewers and the people who favourite this, as well as those who just read it in general.**

**A Razor's Edge**

**Chapter Three: The Foe**

_Three months after Awakening..._

"One calling in. Rest of you good to go?" He asked, tapping into his suit's comms system.

"Two here. Little cold but I'm in position and itching to get out of here." His second-in-command replied almost immediately.

"Three. A patrol came almost passed me but they've gone now. Ready and waiting." He heard the third member of his team confirm.

"Four. I am good to go." The fourth patched in.

"Five, I'm with Two, it's bloody freezing out here even with these suits." The fifth and final member of their team groused. One smiled, he knew that he would complain now so that he'd be able to focus on the task at hand when it began in proper.

He tapped once more into his suit's communications, cycling between the frequencies until he found the one he needed.

"One to Mother. Razor is poised, I repeat, Razor is poised." He had to wait a moment before he received a reply, the atmospherics on this icicle tended to throw off communications, his own more than most.

"Mother to Razor, we hear you. Firefly is a go. Brace yourselves Razor." As soon as the link ended he cycled back to the previous frequency.

"Razor the corvettes are coming in with payload ready to drop, once they hit I want each of you inside and the building to be secured in two minutes. Single shot only and check your targets before you open fire; we need all of the tech in there usable, One out." He heard confirmations from the rest of his team.

Silence reigned for a minute before engines could be heard and two corvettes streaked over the facility. Their payload exploded on impact, blasting craters in the snow-covered ground and gouging deep holes in the building. Bodies were tossed like ragdolls or ripped apart by shrapnel, and Daniel saw one of them – a Salarian – clutch his ruptured chest while staring completely agape at the damage, he gurgled pathetically before his head fell back and he moved no more.

Daniel didn't see that happen.

He was already sprinting for one of the newly created entrances to the facility in front of him, and he knew that in several other places surrounding the area the rest of his team were doing the same. A human stumbled in front of him, the stump where his left arm used to be leaking blood like a running tap and Daniel caved his skull in with a running blow to put him out of his misery. Up ahead he could see those guards who weren't entering a state of shock begin to rush to their positions, one patrol more quick-witted than most caught him moving and shouted a warning to their comrades.

"**Cloak engaged."**

Daniel leapt to the side before the mercenaries had even brought up their guns and was well clear before they started opening fire.

"One I heard gunfire on your end. Everything okay?" he heard Two ask. Daniel continued sprinting while the mercenaries stared confused at the strange runner who had disappeared into thin air.

"I'm fine Two, group of them were better prepared than the others. Keep moving." He replied curtly and cut the channel as he slipped past the guards who were now taking wary looks around for any sign of Daniel's whereabouts.

He powered up through one of the holes blasted into the building and uncloaked, raising his weapon and immediately scanning his entrance. Nothing but scorched metal, overturned furniture and damaged machinery. He spent a brief moment checking his weapon; an M-15 Vindicator assault rifle, and made sure the heat-sink wasn't clogged or damaged somehow – it would certainly not do to have it jam now of all times. He finished, satisfied that it seemed to be in working order and moved up towards a door that looked as though it had been forced open somehow. He cloaked and poked his head through, Vindicator raised.

He found himself looking upon a rather expansive hallway that looked as though it had barely been touched by the bombing, with doors lining the corridor at regular intervals, with a dip to the left around fifteen metres away. He checked the doors one by one, the first opened into an office that looked as though it hadn't been touched for years, dust caked the desk and the light streamed in and illuminated cobwebs like neon lights from the open shutters.

'_This place doesn't look like it's been visited for years.' _Daniel mused to himself before moving along.

The next door Daniel had to force open himself, all but tearing it from the frame, though it took him a good few minutes to do so. Another deserted office, this one though still had a data frame on the desk, Daniel ran his omni-tool over the machine and ran every program he could remember how to use, but the machine refused to yield its secrets. Daniel marked its position for later study, and prayed someone would get something useful out of it. A crackle in his ear signalled that one of his team was trying to contact him. A quick check confirmed that the caller was Aleska

"All, this is Four. I've entered the loading bay and it looks like digging went on here. Massive cave, lot of rouges died here, I think they were protecting it." She spoke, a slight clip in her rough accent that seemed to indicate pity.

"When the last one ran out of bullets, he tried to take me with his knife. I don't think I have seen behaviour like this since we fight Ceph." She added. Daniel ran a quick brainstorm – rouges were generally cowards when faced with a straight-up fight and had precious little loyalty even among themselves. For them to fight to the last man meant something was indeed up, and Daniel wondered again who exactly had given them the location of this place, and if it was connected to these 'Reapers' as Captain Shepard and Director Dunn said it was. His comms system buzzed into life again.

"Two here, heard some chatter about tunnels too. Seems as though they're afraid of some artefact down there – or reverent of it – either way they talk all hushed about it and I'd bet my Aunt Sally's old Mitsubishi _that's _what they're guarding." Claire reported in. Daniel nodded silently to himself and waited a moment before initialising his own comms.

"Good work Four, Two, anyone got anything more to report?" A chorus of _negatives_ followed.

"Copy that Razor. Four I want you to mark your location and hold that tunnel entrance while the rest of us clear the building. We'll all RV on your position once we're done. Clear?" Four _affirmatives_. Daniel smiled to himself; they'd get the job done.

He left the office and checked the hallway to make sure no one had crept up while he was occupied, nothing was there, and Daniel paced slowly down the corridor to the next door. When he tried it, it was locked and there wasn't anywhere he could get much of a grip so he left it and checked the corner leading left. Rubble blocked his passage, Daniel knew he might be able to shift enough of it, but the way some of it lay perched led him to think that he'd do nothing more than bring the roof down on him if he did. There were two more doors left, the first took him to what looked like a server room – or what Daniel assumed was a server room – plenty of large, glowing machines littered the room, beeping and hissing. Finding nothing otherwise, he marked the location down and left, checking the final door, which led him into the washroom, nothing was found in there, and Daniel was about to call it quits when he heard a muffled beeping.

Curious, he craned his head, trying to determine the source of the noise, he moved to an open shutter: fainter. He took a few steps back: a little louder. He turned around and entered one of the stalls: louder but still muffled. He took a step forwards and checked the lavatory before him, checking the sides and the back. Nothing. He even stuck his hand down it (it looked as though it had been cleaned recently – thank god) and came out with nothing. Shaking his hand dry he took a step back, and then a thought occurred to him. He entered the stall again and placed his ear right on the wall. The beeping grew louder – it had also grown more frequent.

'_No way...'_

Daniel doubled back and left the washroom, sure enough, around five seconds later he heard a loud explosion and felt the building shake. He activated his cloak and entered the room. Several rouges had swept in, two batarians, a turian and three humans, and were even now sweeping the room with their guns. The dust however gave Daniel plenty of cover in addition to his suit's cloak.

One of the leading rouges advanced cautiously towards the half-open door and peeked round, then doubled back almost immediately as if expecting to be shot at. When nothing happened he peeked round again and motioned for his friends to move up with him. Daniel drew his combat knife and crept towards the closest one with his back turned. The sap didn't even hear him coming, and the blade slid in through a gap in his spine, severing the nerves and paralysing the victim almost immediately. A hand muffled the gasp of pain and surprise, and Daniel worked the blade around until the victim moved no more, then set him down gently.

The next victim didn't die half as silently, he moved just as Daniel was about to open his throat and fell to the ground with an audible thud, his remaining four colleagues turned almost immediately and opened fire – evidently they didn't care much for the guy. Daniel held the body up and felt it shake from the numerous impacts, he also felt a stab as a bullet pierced through the body and cut through his unarmoured suit layer, forcing its way through his side. He gritted his teeth and activated his armour mode, suddenly becoming impervious to the incoming fire. Daniel threw the body – which was now a mess of ripped meat – away and levelled his own rifle, in the confines of the hallway, the outlaws had nowhere to run and within seconds they were all dead, a three-round burst having found each one.

Daniel checked his wound, though he knew the suit would have patched itself up already. He could feel it working to repair the damage to his body too, and painkiller had already been administered via the nanites coursing throughout his system. He exited the washroom through the newly created hole in the wall and found himself in what appeared to be a mess hall. The place had taken a heavy hit from the strafing corvettes and debris was everywhere, including a few bloody limbs.

'_Certainly messy.' _Daniel grimaced as he stepped over the ruined torso of a batarian.

"Four. While I was securing the hole, I came across a console. Little difficult at first but nothing I could not handle in time" His teammates were all valued to him, but Aleska was something else entirely. A genius who had gained an early entrance to Harvard at seventeen, she was fluent in no less than six languages including her own native Polish and had something of a gift when it came to technology. "As I was browsing, I found and gained access to some old maintenance and logistical reports..." She trailed off, as if waiting for someone to call her out. His curiosity piqued, Daniel opened his own comms.

"I get the feeling that you're going somewhere with this Four." He could almost imagine Aleska nodding with that slight self-satisfied grin she wore when she'd figured out a particularly challenging puzzle.

"Yes One, I am. Don't you think that the resistance here has been unusually light? I've encountered no more than ten hostiles since the operation began. How about the rest of you?" she asked.

"Two. I've neutralised eight, Four."

"Three. Just five on my end."

"Five. I've not seen a bloody thing since I entered Storage, must all be upstairs looking for you lot."

"And I've tagged seven." Daniel muttered through his open channel. Aleska was right, it was strange. Even with the dead outside, plus maybe a few more from the corvette strike inside the building, the numbers couldn't have come out at more than fifty. This was supposed to be an outlaw stronghold – one of at least eight on this planet, granted not everyone would be expected to fight but Daniel hadn't seen a single non-combatant since he'd arrived. Surely with the speed of the strike they'd not have been able to evacuate them – if that were even a priority in the first place, he found that most 'workers' such outlaws acquired were little more than slaves forced into servitude, the few who weren't were bandits themselves and would thus likely be fighting with the others.

Daniel was suddenly conscious of how quiet it was and he felt a shiver travel up his spine. This place was a ghost town.

"It is as I thought. I suspect that this has something to do with this hole and whatever is down there, I will continue with my watch. Four out." And with that her voice faded, only to be replaced by Eoin's moments later.

"Five here. I think I've – oh jesus guys there's a whole bunch of people in Storage. All of 'em stripped bare and shaved. I'm...na...WH...FU..." Daniel heard the distinctive din of gunfire before static interference overtook and blocked him out. Daniel boosted his own signal but turned up nothing but more interference. He swore loudly and opened his universal channel.

"One to Razor, who's closest to Storage?" his tone brooked no argument – simply immediate response.

"Three. I think that's me One. I'll go see what's up with Five." Aakash's report was anything but smooth – the interference that had taken Eoin's own comms down must be close to his location too. Indeed when he tried hailing his teammate, he got no response. He ignored the niggling feeling in the back of his head and continued on, finally exiting the mess hall and entering yet another deserted corridor, this one much uglier than the previous due to loose cabling and ugly grey tiles lining it, punctuated occasionally by pipes of various sizes.

Of three possible exits, one was locked, and the other led to a substantially sized quarter that looked even larger than most Commissioned Officer's quarters. The final portal led Daniel into a much more pleasant, spacious hallway which looked like the main entrance, glancing at his omni-tool; he brought up a map of the building scheme and found his way towards Aleska's location, ducking through more corridors which seemed to roll on endlessly, until finally he reached the entrance to the loading bay.

The doors opened to a scene that he knew would stay with him for the rest of his life.

Bodies littered the doorway, piled up on top of each other, forming a grisly mound of death; the blood of various races spread out from the corpses in a wide pool, mixing with each other, in a morbid way it was fairly pretty. Tearing his eyes away from the gruesome spectacle, he saw that a slightly smaller trail led towards what looked like a crane, and sitting there with his assault rifle resting on her shoulder was Aleska.

"Sir." She inclined her head respectfully. Daniel forgot his words for a moment, too horrified by the sight of such concentrated death. He shook his head and clamped down on his rising gorge.

"Aleska... What the hell happened here? I thought you said your contact was –"

"Limited to ten, yes I did. In the time it took you to get here, more arrived. Not just the bandits, non-coms too. All of them just driving towards me like berserkers, I wasn't sure before but now I'm absolutely certain – we've got a lead here. Something connected to these 'Reapers' must be around here, down that hole, they wouldn't have thrown themselves into my sights otherwise." Aleska interrupted and explained with a neutral logic that sounded almost ice cold. The bodies fit her analysis completely, though even if she hadn't explained it, Daniel was sure he'd have been able to connect the dots himself.

The doors to the loading bay suddenly opened behind him with a hiss of machinery, he spun around, rifle raised and armour mode active – and came face to face with Claire.

"Twitchy today huh Cappy?" Daniel could easily picture her grinning behind her visor. Though her posture told him she'd almost brought her own gun up. He knew his squad – her tease was just down to nerves.

After calming down, the two of them headed over to Aleska, who tilted her head as if curious, and Daniel felt an unseen signal pass between her and Claire. Not liking it one bit – but not entirely sure as to why – Daniel cleared his throat, getting both their attention. He nodded in the direction of the gaping hole in the ground.

"So, this Reaper artefact or whatever is down there." Aleska nodded sharply, as if offended by Daniel's need to confirm her deduction. He let it slide.

"Alright, Claire, we're going in. Aleska, you hold your current position and wait for Aakash and Eoin, reporting in every two minutes. When they arrive, I want you to decide which one of you stays on guard up here. The other two will follow us down there and give us backup – and extra explosives if we need it." The two nodded in understanding. The briefings had been clear: locate Reaper tech, gather as much data as possible, then destroy it before the effects of exposure to said tech began to sink in. A few communiqués from Cerberus – a radical pro-humanity group as Director Dunn had explained to him – had explained much. Daniel still wasn't sure how they had found out about their mission, and it was something which irked Captain Shepard immensely, almost as much as the rumours of her daughter's supposedly faked death and recent affiliation with the shady organisation. Surprisingly enough though, their rare, untraceable messages proved to be a valuable source of information, though Shepard seemed to suspect that Cerberus had actually known about these sites long before deigning to inform them about it.

It was partly the reason she'd jumped on this one so quickly – the simple fact that this facility had no connections or was yet to be cracked by Cerberus had been like dangling a free pot of gold in her face. Too good to pass up, yet almost too good to be true, if there was one thing he'd learned about his new CO, it was that she was nothing if not wary. Years of Alliance service had drilled her into considering every possibility – the most frequently proposed of which when Cerberus was involved was the dicey word 'ambush'. Daniel didn't see why she was so worked up about it – these Cerberus people were pro-human right? Why would they possibly want to take down a Systems Alliance ship with the goal of taking out the greatest threat to not only humanity, but also the entire universe?

He shook thoughts of jumping at shadows from his mind and focused it on his present task. He took a glow-flare and activated it, tossing it down the hole – for such a well-lit room, the excavation site looked as black as night. Eerie red light illuminated the cavern, and Daniel spent a moment wondering why exactly it was always red, never white light, it worked well enough everywhere else, why not in flares? Surely it would make things much easier to discern. He kept his musings to himself though and with Claire to his left, the pair stepped into the depths.

The tunnel seemed to stretch forever, and Daniel was sure it had been almost five minutes of descending already – five minutes of silence – Aleska wasn't reporting in, which probably meant she was unable to reach them, or vice versa. Claire lit another glow-flare as the first began to die, and tossed it further down the tunnel, and they trudged on.

It felt like half an hour had passed, he and Claire stopped to light a flare every couple of minutes until eventually their supplies began to dwindle and they activated their nano-vision. Eventually the tunnel began to expand abruptly, and all of a sudden, their nano-vision began to flicker, Daniel checked his visor's heads-up display; energy levels were at seventy-five percent and draining, albeit far slower than they would have thanks to some rudimentary modification by the technicians aboard the _Retribution_, they'd done no more than that for fear they might irreversibly damage the suits. Daniel checked all his other suit functions, all good. There was some sort of interference in this open space, perhaps the same thing that had silenced Eoin and Aakash? If so that probably meant trouble was ahead.

Suddenly his visor went dark.

He cursed aloud and fumbled, completely blind. He could hear Claire doing the same – her nano-vision must have cut out too. He tried re-booting his visor – nothing. Daniel cursed again and searched for a glow-flare, his fingers however had no sight to guide them, and he felt a handful of glow-flares slip from the mag-pouch on his suit and heard them spill onto the ground. He swore viciously under his breath and got on all fours, feeling for the flares until his fingers finally found one. He gave a brief, triumphant laugh and activated the flare –

– and stared right into the face of a nightmare.

The thing had undoubtedly been human at some point prior to its transformation, though cybernetic cabling replaced its veins and arteries, machinery occupied the space where organs used to reside, and an unnatural energy powered its movements where nerves had before. The creature howled in Daniel's face and struck him with a vicious blow to his head. So stunned, so horrified was he by this abominable being's appearance that he had forgone to activate his suit's armour. Daniel reeled, dazed, and the creature fell on him again, raining blow after blow on his body until eventually Daniel forced himself to accept what he was seeing and activated his armour, if the creature noticed that he was no longer reacting to its blows then it paid no notice. Daniel crashed a closed fist into its head, snapping it back at a speed that would have left an ordinary person paralysed, the creature continued to attack. Disgusted, Daniel knocked it back with the butt of his gun and riddled it with bullets, the creature – finally spent – collapsed to the floor. He removed the spent heat sink with a casual snap of the release catch and gazed absently at his kill, a resounding thud to his left brought his attention to Claire, who was standing over two broken bodies not dissimilar to the horror he'd just slain.

"Jesus..." she sighed and rolled a hand over her head, letting the arm clutching her assault rifle fall.

"Yeah." Was all Daniel could muster in response. Neither of them could describe with any certainty what they felt at the moment. Daniel pondered on what Aleska had told Razor – were these the missing staff? Where were the rest? Were they all like this? Reduced to mindless abominations of machinery and flesh? He was liking their predicament less and less with each second.

A further howl echoed throughout the cavern, and another, and another, until all Daniel could hear was a cacophony of torture vocal chords which resounded in his head like the voices of the damned. He wanted to throw up; it was almost like the voice was inside his skull.

"**Threat detected" **chimed his suit, and almost immediately he noticed shapes moving towards them at the edge of the light, and behind the horde of charging figures stood something undeniably ancient, which – even to this very day – oozed pure malevolence.

The Mass Effect Core of a starship – but this looked different, sleeker, and it pulsed with a light that hurt Daniel's eyes. Only when the first wave of horrors breached the perimeter of light that the flare had created and snapped Daniel straight back into reality, did he become aware of the situation – and the peril he and his squad were in. Claire seemed to have realised it too, because she had activated her comms – and even though no one could hear her but him, she bellowed as if someone might – in the slimmest of hopes – hear her cry:

"_Reaper!_"


	4. The Enemy Unveiled

**This one's a long time coming and I apologise for the very late update, particularly considering that – that is, if review counts are a measurement of success – this is probably the most popular story I've written for this site.**

**Finally got my answers concerning two of the characters from the first game – I'm not going to give spoilers but suffice to say finding out was like a kick in the teeth. For more info, read the comics; which picks up immediately where the first game leaves off.**

**A Razor's Edge**

**Chapter Four: The Enemy Unveiled**

The monsters kept coming.

The cavern seemed to be completely filled with the creatures, all of them releasing a tortured, mechanical howl as they clambered over rocks, and each other to rend at the two intruders in their midst. An ordinary team of human Special Forces would have been overwhelmed in seconds; buried under a mass of cold flesh mixed with ancient machinery, ripped apart and torn to shreds by limbs which possessed a far greater strength than their lanky builds suggested.

Fortunately, Razor One and Two were far from ordinary.

Daniel threw one of the husks into a group, spending all of his suit energy in the process but knocking the howling monstrosities over like bowling pins and providing him with enough breathing space to let rip with his Vindicator, tearing through flesh and augmented bone but downing only a handful of the beasts. Curling his lips into a snarl, he unleashed a vicious kick to the midsection of one of the creatures and backhanded another, shattering its skull like glass.

He felt a tug on his leg, one of the creatures – everything below its torso a grisly ruin – had clamped on with both hands and was not letting go. It tried to bite through the suit, but the nano-weave, even unhardened, refused to yield to its drooling maw. Daniel raised his free leg and brought it down on the pitiful thing like a hammer, pulverising its head entirely.

A burst of gunfire somewhere to his left told Daniel that Claire was doing fine; though he could easily just have checked her vitals on his suit's visual heads-up display. He put another burst into the head of an encroaching husk and turned it on another in an instant, blasting it off its feet as he burned through the entire thermal clip. The husks pressed around him, and in desperation borne from the sheer persistence of the creatures, Daniel swung his assault rifle like a club, clearing out his immediate surroundings and putting a few more husks down for good, but utterly ruining his weapon.

Snarling in frustration, Daniel threw the battered gun like a javelin at the closest husk; the hunk of metal caved the horror's cranium in entirely, pelting the monsters closest to it with gore. He reached for his sidearm and a Scimitar shotgun and unloaded both into the horde. The scatter shot caused the front wall of husks to stumble, and even dropped a couple. His Predator handgun spat death and dropped even more, though it still felt like chipping away at a mountain with a toothpick. There were so many...

_Far more than this place should reasonably be able to sustain in the first place; even taking into account all the missing personnel above- ground._

The Reaper's mass core shimmered and fluxed, casting that eerie blue glow across the cavern. Even glancing at it hurt Daniel's eyes and caused his suit visor to crackle with static. On the upside though, he didn't need to use his Nano Vision to be able to combat his opponents.

_Or just stay alive._

He powered into the air, taking a fistful of grenades before priming each of them and tossing them into the mob of pressing figures at regular intervals. Explosions rang out and shrapnel brought dozens of husks low, and ruined even more.

But they still kept coming.

It was like a valve had been opened, and the husks streamed forth like a hive of termites. There seemed to be no end to them, and there was a steady pounding in Daniel's head which was steadily getting louder and louder. It was maddening, he wanted to shut it off but no matter how hard he thought or tried to block it out it came back even louder.

A flurry of gunfire took a whole line of husks off their feet, Daniel snapped out of his trance. He'd just frozen in the middle of a very dangerous situation – just like that. He shook his head wildly in an effort to clear his mind. He cast a quick, wary glance at the Reaper mass core.

_If that's what it can do to a guy after just this amount of exposure..._

He shuddered at the thought of the personnel above discovering the buried Reaper, being subjected to its influence for lord-knew how many days and nights.

"Hey! Captain, you still in there?" Aakash's voice came in – if a little crackled from interference, and good God was it good to hear him.

"Captain, we lost contact with you almost a minute after you started your descent, something is interfering with our long-range communications. Eoin is holding position at the top." Aleska's professional tone followed Aakash's almost immediately, and Daniel offered a prayer to whatever divine space power there was out there for smiling down on him this day.

A brutal barrage of fire briefly cleared up Claire's avenue, and she darted back, lacking everything but her combat knife and her own sidearm.

"Bastards are pretty touchy-feely. Gotta be honest; I'm not digging it too much." She muttered over the comm line as she removed a thermal clip from her pistol. Aleska handed her a shotgun, which she took with a nod of thanks. What seemed like a thousand wailing faces advanced on Razor.

"So... plan?" Aakash asked; his assault rifle primed. Daniel thought fast; the core had to be taken out, no doubt about it, but with all the husks around it'd be damned hard to get through – even if they used cloak. So he turned his thoughts to a more direct method of play.

"How much explosives are you all carrying?" Daniel asked as the husks edged ever closer.

"Enough." Aakash answered simply.

"Think I got a charge or two." Claire responded, checking her utility pouches before nodding in confirmation "Yeah. Two charges."

"I have four charges." Aleska replied immediately.

Processing the information as fast as he could – with some help from SECOND – he quickly formulated an idea. Risky as hell and at best it'd only get a pass in Officer Training but with the situation as it was, Daniel really couldn't see a much better option.

"Aakash." The Acting Corporal tilted his head at his name.

"Take all the charges we have and plant all of them on that damn core, set them off and run like hell. We'll keep these zombies off your back."

"Shit boss, you don't ask for much do you?" he asked with a chuckle.

"Just the impossible Aak." Daniel replied as he handed him two time-delayed explosive charges.

"Well, it's what we do." Aakash nodded in affirmation as he accepted charges from the rest of the team.

"Man if you told me ten years ago that _this _is what I'd be doing..." he started as he secured the charges and ejected a thermal clip from his Vindicator.

"Let me guess, you'd not have signed up?" Claire jibed.

"Naw. I'd have run away from home and joined the army early."

"Ten years ago Aak you'd still be frozen. Razor. Move out!" Daniel barked and the team charged, firing their weapons from the hip until the heat sinks bled dry. When that happened Aakash fell in behind the rest of Razor, who tossed all their remaining grenades into the horde of husks. The report disintegrated a great chunk, and opened a grisly path to the Reaper mass core. The approaching husks though were quickly filling in the empty space with more bodies.

_And it's up to three of us to force a way through for our best runner._

The thought didn't exactly comfort him, but it could be worse – they could all be Ceph Devastators. Aleska made first contact, punching straight through the ribcage of one of the husks and tearing it in half before moving onto her next opponent. Claire crushed the skull of her first victim and used its limp body as an improvised weapon. Daniel lifted one into the air and broke its spine upon his knee, tossing the twitching body to one side.

The team wreaked absolute havoc as they cleared a path to the mass core, broken bodies were tossed aside like ragdolls and limbs were torn from their sockets and used to bludgeon even more husks to death. Each time the blood caked his visor, Daniel had to remind himself that anything resembling a person was gone forever – it wouldn't do to dwell on who the creature in front of him might have been, or who it might have become.

The advance pressed on towards the glowing core, though there seemed to be a limitless amount of bodies pressing against Razor, and each time they had to halt for a moment to let their suit recharge added more pressure against them. By the time they were almost within spitting distance of the core there was a trail of broken bodies in Razor's wake, but the tide of husks showed no sign of wavering.

Daniel cursed for the umpteenth time as he hurled another lifeless body into the seething mass of bodies surrounding them. The core glowed balefully a mere stone's throw away, and Daniel swore that it pulsed even quicker as though enraged, or afraid, though the thought disappeared as quickly as it came.

"Aak! Throw the damn charges!" Daniel bellowed through his comms. Aakash didn't hesitate, he simply took as many charges in each hand as he could hold and threw them full power at the heart of the Reaper. Some of the charges simply bounced off and fell to the ground, others stuck. Aakash remembered that he'd not primed any of the ones he'd just thrown for detonation and took a few moments to set a timer on one of the last before throwing them at the pulsing core.

"How long have we got Aak?" Daniel asked as another husk crumpled before him with a sizeable hole in its skull, already beginning his retreat with the rest of Razor in tow.

"About four minutes, though I couldn't get much of a reading with all the commotion so if it's all the same to you sir I suggest we get the fuck out of dodge as soon as we can."

"No argument here." Aleska murmured dryly.

The retreat took much less time than the push forwards. The husks still persisted, though their numbers finally seemed to be drying up, and individually – even with their enhanced strength – they were little match for Razor, who dodged their wild, frenzied attacks and drove knives into eye sockets or crushed bone with their fists. The fighting was brutal and frantic but eventually Razor managed to pull away from the mass of husks, and charged full pelt up the dig towards the surface.

"Ss... Yo... ere... Sa... gain... can you read me boss?" Eoin's voice started as mere interference but steadily grew clearer as the team pressed onwards.

"Eoin, we are leaving this place stat; get outside, find a suitable drop zone and plant an extraction beacon on the double! No questions; just _go!_" Eoin did Daniel proud, not even stopping to reply in affirmative.

Three minutes later the charges went off. The core shattered, and those few who survived the corvette strafing run and Razor's offensive suddenly dropped dead as if the strings that held them up had simply been cut. The cavern collapsed, and the facility itself seemed to dip into the ground as if the planet itself was sucking it up. Eventually all that remained was a sunken crater, with loose pieces of rubble and debris the only objects marking that an outlaw hideout ever stood there in the first place.

Razor Team saw none of this.

By the time the first of the detonations occurred, Razor had already run two kilometres towards designated extraction site Theta where Eoin was waiting with an Alliance transport shuttle with two corvettes acting as escort and air support for the retreating squad. Within seconds they were in the air and blasting into the stratosphere where the _Retribution _awaited with Director Dunn, Captain Shepard, and most surprisingly Executive Kryik.

"Hello again Razor. Fantastic job down there; shame you couldn't get any specifics on that core but considering the effects that active Reaper tech seems to have on us organics I don't really blame you for taking steps to destroy it." Dunn greeted Razor with a friendly wave in the briefing room. Captain Shepard looked less enthusiastic – probably because of Dunn's presence – but having spent a good three months under her leadership, Daniel could read the signs; she was glad to have Razor back in one piece, but there was something that was eating at her, she was uneasy.

"Yes. Good to have you back Razor, but while you were down there we've had some disturbing communiqués from Alliance Command." That explained it. Somewhat.

"Not just from your Systems Alliance either Captain." Kryik interjected, sounding as if he hadn't had a proper rest in days "We're getting reports from traders, fleeing privateers, families, even a few rogues and outlaws – not too different from those hiding on the planet you just left."

"Pardon my interruption; but what are you talking about?" Daniel spoke up.

Director Dunn's friendly aura vanished in an instant, Captain Shepard released a heavy sigh and Kryik merely turned his head away from everyone.

"About a week ago we lost all contact with the Batarian Hegemony. We feared for a while that they were finally gearing up for a war with humanity, what with my..." she paused, weighing her words carefully, as if she was no longer sure what they meant to her "daughter's association with the loss of an entire Batarian colony." Razor had heard about that; the Captain hadn't come out of her quarters for days after the news broke out; leaving briefings and command of the vessel to Dunn or her Executive Officer respectively.

"The truth is much worse. A group of trader vessels were attacked by several unidentified vessels all matching – or with very similar profiles to that of the flagship that attacked the Citadel more than two years ago..." The Captain trailed off; Daniel connected the dots mere micro-seconds after Aleska did.

"Sovereign..." she whispered "the Reapers." Daniel's blood had already run cold.

No one said anything for a moment until Kryik finally turned back to the group.

"They're massacring their way through to the Sol System, reports indicate they'll be at Earth within two weeks – and that's an optimistic guess." He explained, his voice was leaden with barely concealed grief.

"We had a facility just on the edge of Batarian space in an asteroid belt; kinda like the one we thawed you guys out in, but it went dark shortly after the Reapers broke out. My sister..." he couldn't finish. Dunn got up out of his chair and gave him a consolatory shoulder squeeze before continuing where his friend had left off.

"Ritar Kryik led a team developing some experimental nodes for your nanosuits. It's imperative that we get those. If Ritar was right about what they found... well shit it could make you guys the only chance against the Reapers we've got short of an entire galactic armada. Though that's not the whole of it just yet; the scanners on the facility picked up vessel profiles distinctly matching those used by the Ceph." Daniel narrowed his eyes.

"Ever since the Citadel Mandate fifty years ago no one's so much as glimpsed the Ceph. We have a few theories but the one that worries us most concerns the Reapers too." Daniel saw where he was going with that, but Claire beat him to the punch.

"Let me guess; you think the Reapers have indoctrinated the Ceph?" she asked.

"That's the absolute worst-case scenario; the most optimistic view we have at present is that they're hell bent on wiping us out now that the Council races have the Reapers on their hands. We gave their observers quite the kicking all those years ago."

"Excuse me; what do you mean 'observers'?" Eoin asked pointedly.

"What it means Mr. Carroll is that the things we fought off when we were convinced our planet was about to die weren't the real Ceph. They were bottom feeders – the lowest on the food chain – a subspecies we think. A note taken from an interrogation with Alcatraz/Prophet notes that Hargreave described them as 'gardeners and hedge trimmers'*****. Chances are, when you get to this facility you'll see the guys the Ceph turn to when they have a _real_ fight on their hands." Dunn was to the point, and more serious than Daniel had ever seen him in the short time he'd known him.

"Admittedly the chances that the facility hasn't been burnt to a cinder by now are slim at best – and even if it hasn't; the nodes Ritar and her team were working on might be a ruin – but as long as that slim chance remains..."

"We can't... _won't _let Ritar's sacrifice be for nothing." Kryik intoned, his voice still heavy, but there was a fire in his eyes, and Daniel noticed that his hands were clenched, shaking.

"The war you've been preparing for has begun." Captain Shepard spoke prophetically, the iron in her voice almost startling "I suggest you check your gear and make sure your suits are operating at maximum efficiency. We make all speed for the facility on the Asteroid belt in the Felar System. Then, when we have those nodes implemented into the suits, we get back to Earth and stop those Reapers stone cold."

**Short chapter this. As always, reading is appreciated, reviews and constructive criticism would be appreciated even more. **

*** Read Crysis: Legion. It goes into a lot more detail about the Ceph, the nanosuit and well, just about everything. The game was good but really, the book gets the story across in a much, much better way.**


	5. Contact

**This has been a long time coming. Partly because up until recently I wasn't actually sure how I was going to go about writing this one, partly because I had other stuff I wanted to work on, and mostly because I had assignments and exams to prepare for. Let me reassure my readers that this story is in no way forgotten, nor are my other works of fiction on this site. They will be updated, just not consistently.**

**A Razor's Edge**

**Chapter Five: Contact**

Connor ran.

He pulled two of his squad mates behind him; one dragging a ruined, bloody leg who moaned and whimpered every few seconds. The other had light pistols in both hands and blazed away at the creature that tore its way through the facility, screaming bloody murder at the top of her lungs. A projectile hissed past his head and Connor almost gasped at the sudden heat. It felt like the focused power of an exploding sun.

He rounded a corner, three security personnel stood with weapons raised, motioning for Connor to hurry on past.

They were all dead men.

No sooner had Connor dragged Jillian and Crewe past the pathetic checkpoint the gunfire started. Avenger assault rifles liberated from the facility's tiny armoury. It was sufficient enough to deal with any pirates or cutthroats who took an interest in the facility.

The creatures attacking them were no such foes.

An agonised scream told him that one of his defenders was dying. A sickening crunch and the voice was silenced. A deep _thump-thump-thump _and another weapon ceased firing. The last one kept up for two more seconds before suddenly a large blur collided with the wall immediately left of Connor, denting the metal and painting it with Turian blood. Connor sobbed and continued to drag Jillian and Crewe to the shuttle bays; if what the comms had said before they had died it was the only place that was safe anymore.

Connor opened a door and pulled his two squad mates through before locking it hurriedly with his omni-tool. He then took hold of his two friends by the scruffs of their necks and resumed his task, his blood running cold as he heard the loud, resonating _clangs _as the creature tried to force its way through the steel door.

He got around the next corner before the portal finally caved in and the creature resumed the hunt, but Connor was in sight of his objective. Yes! The door to the shuttle bay; it was still open! He could hear gunfire from behind but surely there was some safety, he could imagine the vehicles being prepared for launch, the Project Manager holding the shuttle doors open, pistol flaring as she demanded the pilot wait for the last men and women to arrive.

An explosion staggered him, but he recovered and continued at an even more hurried pace. He felt strangely lighter than he had before and deduced that the near-death experience coupled with the rush of adrenaline had forced his body past its limits. He reached the door to the bay, opened it and reached down low to push his friends inside –

– and found that he was holding merely a severed head and a limbless torso.

Connor froze for a few seconds before crying out in revulsion and grief, dropping what remained of his friends. Crewe's head bounced and rolled gracelessly on the floor, trailing blood, while Jillian's bloody corpse merely slumped to the ground, motionless. Connor wept and crawled to the door, opening it and pulling himself inside before rolling onto his back, sobbing uncontrollably at his comrades' grisly death.

A flash from the corner of his eye caught his attention and Connor turned his head, feeling his heart sink lower and lower as he took the spectacle in.

The shuttles were little more than wrecks, of the eight that had been stored here, waiting to be used; only one appeared to have escaped. The rest burned, one seemed to have been able to lift off but was struck in two of its engines by a terrible weapon, throwing it off balance and causing it to crash – right through a group of personnel.

Creatures filled the room, gunning down surviving personnel without mercy or restraint. The scattered resistance stood defiant, but the creatures appeared to shrug off or entirely ignore the gunfire that lashed against them. Soon the answering return fire stopped entirely, and Connor knew he was on his own.

The door exploded open, and Connor's hunter loomed over him. The creature raised its bulky weapon, levelling it with his head and Connor released a strangled sob as he realised he was about to die. He shut his eyes and tried to think of happier times.

The weapon roared.

Daniel blinked as his eyes adjusted to his suit's start-up feedback. He cast his gaze over the rest of his squad, all suited up and awaiting the pre-mission systems check. Daniel ran through the various protocols and programs with a thought, and marvelled at how ahead of time these suits were. Even a hundred and fifty years later there was nothing like the nanosuit in the whole galaxy.

"Systems start-up initiated." Daniel intoned. Within a minute all four vitals on his HUD feed blinked into life with a healthy green glow. Daniel nodded in satisfaction.

"Alright Razor?" Director Dunn's voice filled their comms.

"Yes Director. Something you need?" Daniel asked. He heard Dunn chuckle on the other end.

"Not this time; just wishing you boys and girls the best of luck. This'll be the first real contact we've had with the Ceph in more than fifty years, and to top it off they might be indoctrinated by the Reapers. There's no telling what you'll find down there so keep your wits about you and remember; you're not there to fight. You're there to grab those nodes and get out."

"What about Executive Kryik's sister? Or any other survivors we should encounter?" Daniel heard Director Dunn sigh heavily.

"It's been more than three days since we got that distress signal. What's more, all personnel in that facility were issued with Friend or Foe tags we tuned so the scanners we've attached to the _Retribution _could pick them up from an entire star system away… they're all dark Staff Lieutenant. There's no one down there we _can_ save… Dunn out." With that Dunn cut the link.

Daniel felt himself sink. It almost reminded him of the Ceph war back on Earth. Regularly he and his team had ventured into combat zones with massive civilian casualties; people he and his team could have saved had they been fast enough. He shook his head slowly and hefted his shotgun, resolving to personally voice his displeasure with the very first Ceph he saw.

The shuttle doors opened and Daniel and his squad were greeted with the void.

"Shuttle bay's fucked Razor. Can't land there but it looks like there's a hole big enough for all of you to squeeze through in the… mess hall if these schematics are right. Good luck Razor. Give me a buzz when you need a pickup." The pilot's voice chirped through the comms channel. Daniel nodded and motioned for Razor to follow his lead, and with that he took a step off the shuttle and let the low gravity pull him gently towards the ground.

He landed on the roof of the facility, unable to hear anything but the sound of his own breathing. The mini map on his HUD told him that the other four members of Razor were behind him and maintaining a star-pattern defensive formation. He silently commended them on their speed in executing the manoeuvre before making for the hole in the mess hall; it was easily big enough to fit a Ceph Devastator through, never mind the five members of Razor team.

The mess hall lived up to its name. Tables, chairs, various utensils and bodies were scattered everywhere. The way some of the tables were aligned told Razor that some had tried to make a stand here, but they had been overwhelmed. Daniel motioned for Razor to follow him and he made his way to the exit. The door had been violently forced open, as if something had quite literally _crashed _through and into the mess hall. The pock-marked door and the wall behind told him that the intruder had clearly been hostile, but whatever it was had left no trace of its presence besides the massacre.

Razor entered a long corridor, dank and deserted save for the odd corpse or splash of blood. A corpse moved in Daniel's peripheral and he rounded on it, shotgun primed. His team followed suit scant nanoseconds later. A Tick scuttled out from behind the body and skittered into an open ventilation grille; Aleska swore in revulsion and tried stomping on the tiny thing. Eoin calmed her down.

"My apologies Staff Lieutenant." She said, panting slightly "I – I have no excuse."

"It's fine Corporal." Daniel responded "But I need you to keep a lid on that kind of behaviour from here on out. As far as we're aware, we're in enemy territory." Aleska straightened and nodded several times before falling back into formation.

She was without a doubt one of the most calculating, dedicated and intelligent soldiers Daniel had ever met, but those Ticks sent her into a frenzy. She had landed herself in a whole hive of them while out on a training exercise some years before the last offensive. Thousands of them had latched onto her suit and tried to force their way through to get at the soft flesh beneath. She had spent two days in that hive clawing and batting at the vile machines until the rest of Razor had arrived with flamethrowers and incendiaries.

The Tick however confirmed Daniel's – and Razor team as a whole's – suspicions.

The Ceph were still here.

The Tick was sleeker than the ones on Earth had been, faster too, more alien, but it was definitely Ceph. They wouldn't just leave these things here alone, there had to be others.

A resounding clang sounded off in the depths of the facility and Razor tensed. Without hesitation, each of them engaged their suits cloak function and paced along the gloomy corridor slowly, cautiously.

Suddenly a creature rounded the corner. It was bipedal, mechanic, not unlike the Ceph encountered on Earth, but it was sleeker, leaner, as though it had been cut from stone. The helm of the machine was a light blue-grey, with four dull, glowing eye slits sitting on its angular face. It carried a large gun in its two mechanical arms, which were noticeably thicker as though containing a flesh and bone limb, and not a mere mechanical prosthetic used to manipulate the environment.

It was both familiar, and unfamiliar, and Daniel knew instinctively that this was his old foe.

"Ceph." He whispered through the comms and magnetically locked his shotgun to his suit, going for his combat knife. He wanted this dealt with quietly so as not to alert any other Ceph to their presence. The alien tilted its head at the seemingly empty corridor, like an animal hunting for a scent. It took a tentative step forward, then another, until it was coming straight at Razor.

Slowly, quietly as they could, Razor positioned themselves flat against the walls of the corridor so as to allow the alien to pass by them. Each of them mag-locked their weapons and took hold of their knives in order to assist their team leader.

The alien passed Daniel, passed Aakash and then Daniel gave the signal.

Five nanosuit warriors materialised into sight, each of them with a blade held positioned to strike at wherever they assumed the alien's weak points were. Aakash drove his blade into a leg joint in a stunning display of precision, the weapon drew a strange, sky-blue metallic fluid when he pulled it out and stabbed another joint.

Aleska cut what looked like power cables in the back of the Ceph's suit, severing them easily with the help of the suit's enhanced power. The cables bled a viscous black fluid that sizzled as it hit the metallic floor of the corridor.

Eoin forced his weapon directly into the alien's side, through what appeared to be a soft spot. The surprisingly soft dark material gave way immediately and withdrawing the weapon released the same blue fluid that Aakash's own blow did.

Claire – a woman after Daniel's own heart – went for the back of the base of what she assumed was the creature's neck. Sticking the tip of the blade in deep, she pulled it towards her viciously, releasing more blue liquid and drawing a spasm from the alien.

Daniel finished the ambush by planting his knife in the underside of the creature's helm. The blade slid in and drove all the way to the creature's brain, ending its life. The alien dropped to the floor, the low gravity greatly slowing its descent and allowing Daniel to catch it before it made any noise.

He hefted it up and passed it to Eoin. He could feel him raise an eyebrow.

"Take that to the infiltration point and toss it outside. We don't want the Ceph knowing someone's about." Eoin looked hesitant at first.

"It's not that far Eoin. We'll wait for you." Daniel said, exasperated. Eoin sighed through his comms and stalked off with the body, mumbling about 'shit jobs'.

It took him less than two minutes to return. With the team reunited, Razor moved on through the facility.

They silenced no less than five more Ceph as they made their way through the medical wing, the crew quarters and a large gymnasium and what Daniel assumed was some kind of cinema. Eventually a blip showed up on his mini map. Razor Team found their way in a chamber filled with scattered tools and benches, the blip on Daniel's mini map led him to two toppled chairs sitting on a small locker. Daniel chortled. It would be obvious even to the untrained eye that the chairs were meant to cover the locker.

Without much effort he heaved the metal chairs off the locker and picked it up, inspecting it briefly before opening a secure channel to Director Dunn.

"This it?" he asked.

"Yes… Yes! That's it! The nodes should be inside that locker! Now all you need to do is –" Dunn's voice was cut off abruptly and suddenly an awful keening filled his ears, driving Daniel to his knees. He clamped his hands over his ears to try and stifle the din but it continued as loud and piercing as it had to begin with. Daniel felt something warm and wet leak from his ears and prayed that nothing vital was damaged in the oratory assault.

And then, just as soon as it had started the noise stopped. Casting a slow, agonised glance around the chamber he saw that the rest of Razor had been affected as badly as he had, and were picking themselves off the ground.

"I think someone knows we're here." Aakash groaned through an open channel, and then yelped in surprise as something grasped hold of his leg.

The Ceph warrior pulled the man into the air and viciously slammed him into the wall, leaving a considerable dent and a groaning Aakash. Aleska dived at the alien, tackling it to the ground before pummelling its face. The alien knocked her off it with a heavy backhanded blow before clambering to its feet and drawing its weapon. The gun screeched and hissed, then released several bright blue flares of energy. Daniel, Eoin and Claire leapt out of the way, leaving the projectiles to gouge great chunks out of the wall behind them.

Claire held her shotgun one-handed as she unclamped it from her suit, pointing it directly at the Ceph's face. A squeeze of the trigger and the weapon blazed into life.

The alien didn't budge.

It didn't even flinch, and instead it slapped the weapon out of Claire's hands and delivered a vicious headbutt, which staggered Claire but didn't down the woman thanks to her suit's armour mode absorbing the impact.

Eoin in the meantime had stepped inside the alien's attack range and pressed his shotgun against the chin of the Ceph warrior. With a bellow of triumph he pulled the trigger and the alien's head disappeared, replaced with meaty chunks of flesh and viscous blue liquid (that Daniel later realised was their blood).

The skirmish had barely finished when Daniel ordered Razor to move out immediately to the exfiltration point – namely the hole in the mess hall. Taking hold of the locker, Daniel stood in the centre of his team, with Eoin on point and Claire just behind him, while Aakash and Aleska brought up the rear.

The metallic keening started again, though it sounded more distant this time. No sooner had Razor left the workshop when another Ceph warrior burst through a door, its gun already cycling for a shot. Eoin riddled it with point-blank submachine gun fire, though the alien ignored the shots entirely. Come to think of it, Daniel wasn't even seeing a scratch on the Ceph.

"They've got shields." He murmured, then repeated his discovery through the comms.

Shortly after, all of Razor focused their fire on the alien, until finally its shields collapsed and the creature was brought down, with Aleska's shotgun dealing the _coup de grace_. They barely had time to exchanged thermal clips when _another _alien began tearing down the corridor, Eoin and Claire exhausted an entire thermal clip each on the charging alien but its shields remained. The Ceph leapt straight at Daniel, its arms outstretched.

The Ceph collided with Daniel like a freighter, bowling him over like a toy and causing the locker to slip from his grasp. The alien hammered a blow against Daniel's head, dazing him briefly but not nearly long enough for the alien to capitalise on and the vicious blow that followed found nothing but the dull white metal of the floor. Daniel took hold of both the Ceph's arms and began to squeeze. There was a great rending of metal and a crunching of bone and meat and the creature weakened.

Daniel brought his knees up to his chest and kicked the alien viciously in its torso, maintaining his vice-like grip on its limbs. The alien rocketed into the wall, missing both its limbs and the stumps scattered blue blood all over the floor as the alien thrashed and writhed in agony before finally lying still. Daniel grunted and tossed the lifeless arms of the Ceph aside, picking up the locker and hurrying on with his team.

A sudden explosion rocked the facility and the corridor suddenly decompressed as all the oxygen escaped through a great wound in the structure.

"Move!" Daniel shouted through comms "We've got to move!"

Two Ceph appeared from behind Razor and began raining fire on the nanosuit warriors. Aakash took a direct hit to his sternum and was knocked off his feet. Thankfully though his vitals remained green; he must have put his suit's armour up when the aliens began shooting. His weapon on the other hand, was not so fortunate, and lay in pieces around him, leaving Aakash with just his Predator pistol, which he immediately drew and resumed unloading onto the advancing Ceph.

Razor gradually fell back; the Ceph fire constantly chasing them as more and more of the aliens seemed to appear and give chase to the retreating humans. Finally though, they reached the mess hall, though they were low on ammunition and each of them needed a moment for their suits to recharge. Eoin, Aakash and Aleska began hauling chairs and tables into a makeshift barricade against the door while Claire watched over them. Daniel tried to open a link to the _Retribution_.

"Chariot this is Razor. Come in. Chariot, Razor is requesting immediate extraction from the mess hall, do you copy?" His frustration grew as silence greeted him.

Suddenly Daniel found himself levitating in the air… no… there was something…

He was encased in a giant claw! Something had punched through the roof of the mess hall and grabbed him! Already he saw his team react to their leader's peril, Claire dug her knife into a joint, but it had no effect. Aakash and Aleska were unloading their pistol and shotgun respectively into the limb, again to no noticeable effect.

Finally the limb pulled back, dragging Daniel out and into the void.

He found himself face to face with easily the largest Ceph machine he had ever encountered in his life. It stood just over the height of a Ceph Pinger. Bipedal, hulking, with four large, heavy limbs, two of them ending in vicious looking claws – one of which Daniel found himself encased in – and the others wielding enormous guns which Daniel doubted even the suit's armour could save him from should it hit him directly.

The machine pulled Daniel close to what he assumed was its optics; a large, glaring red 'eye' in the centre of its huge mechanical chest. It seemed to regard him with curiosity for a moment, then one of its weapon arms raised and levelled itself with Daniel's head and exposed upper torso. He struggled but its strength was immense, and the machine did not budge. Lights began to glow to life in the weapon and Daniel knew he had seconds at best – if he could only get his arm…

Just as the weapon discharged an explosion collapsed a chunk of the roof, dislodging the machine's footing. The weapon released a beam of energy that cut through part of the roof like a scalpel.

It also cut through the arm clutching Daniel so tightly.

The limb spun through space away from the Ceph machine, and Daniel fought to stay oriented and also focus on forcing his way out of the grip of the dead arm. Finally it began to slow until finally Daniel found he could work without the distraction of having the world around him spin.

With power to the limb lost, Daniel felt the grip relax slightly and he exploited it in full, diverting all of his suit's power to his strength he finally prised the claw open and freed himself. The alien machine was even now however picking itself up and it would turn on him soon. Even more disconcerting was the fact that none of Razor possessed anything like anti-armour capacity. They were entirely defenceless and Daniel doubted the machine would be willing to shoot another of its own limbs off.

The machine was aiming its other weapon-arm at him, charging even now. Daniel reacted fast, pulling himself along the limb in a startling display of zero-G awareness. Eventually he reached the bisected end of the limb and kicked off with all his strength before engaging his suit's thrusters, propelling himself towards the surface of the asteroid. A sudden force behind him told him that the weapon had fired and detonated, and Daniel now found himself falling without any control, tumbling head over heels towards the ground.

Even in zero-G, this was going to hurt…

He hit the ground like a brick, his suit power drained instantly from the impact. He rolled over and over until finally he hit a cluster of jagged rocks which ended his momentum. The machine had – by now – brought its weapons to bear on the beleaguered man once more and both weapons now charged.

Then its leg exploded, toppling the machine forwards. It fell flat on its face (or the machine's equivalent) on top of the facility where its weapons discharged, flattening a good chunk of it and burying the alien machine in rubble. Daniel felt the colour drain from his face – his team were in there! Where was Razor? He felt himself start to panic and then forced himself to calm down.

He felt himself sigh in relief as the vitals of all four of his team were still coloured in that beautiful green. They were safe. He was safe, and from the looks of it, that Ceph war machine wasn't going to be picking itself up again.

Claire suddenly materialised next to him and snapped off a cheeky salute.

"That was quite the show Cappy." The amusement was plain to hear, though Daniel could detect an underlying tension to it.

_She does care. How cute._

"I take it the explosion was your work?" he asked her. She shook her head.

"Aak's. He took all of our grenades and hopped right onto the bastard's leg. Jammed all of them into a joint, set em off and ran." Daniel whistled, impressed.

"First a beached Reaper, now a Ceph mecha. I think he's quickly becoming our 'go-to guy' for these things." He could tell Claire was grinning beneath her visor.

"I'd say so Cappy. Comms are back up by the way. Think that thing over there was jamming them, shuttle's on its way and Aleska's got the locker with the nodes." Daniel's chest chest swelled with pride.

_This is my team; no one could ask for finer._

"Damn fine job." he told her.

"Uh uh." She said, folding her arms. Daniel glanced at her, confused.

"You are not getting off that easy. You had us all scared to death when that thing pulled you outside. You owe me dinner at least. I don't even want to think about what Aak wants."

"B-but I – it wasn't even –" Daniel sputtered like a dying engine. Claire pushed her index finger against Daniel's visor, silencing him.

"I'll be waiting Cappy." No sooner had she said that than the shuttle finally arrived. Eoin stepped in first, Aleska handed him the cargo before stepping in herself. Aakash gave Claire and Daniel a friendly wave before entering himself.

Daniel was still confused at Claire's behaviour from earlier, but as the shuttle entered the bay of the _Retribution _he felt a fresh wave of pride wash over him. They had met the Ceph and come out on top. They had the nodes which would allegedly give their suits an even more dynamic edge against the Reapers and their puppets. While the war was only just beginning, Daniel couldn't help but feel very optimistic about their chances.

They would win.

He could feel it in the very core of his being.

**And there's chapter 5 folks. Got to say this is actually moving along plot-wise much, much faster than I believed it would when I first started writing this.**

**As always comments are appreciated. Constructive Criticism even more so.**

**Have a good one.**


	6. Invaders

**Oh look it's that guy who takes ages to update his stuff.**

**Enjoy.**

**A Razor's Edge**

**Chapter Six: Invaders**

Daniel scratched his head as he took in his second's appearance. In terms of attire she was dressed how she always was when she was out of the suit: standard navy blue uniform of the Alliance Navy. Yet despite this there was something markedly different about her, and Daniel wasn't entirely sure what it was. Was it that scarlet hair that had grown back significantly over the last week; falling almost to the back of her neck? No. It was something else; something more…

"So are you going to stare or are you going to let me in?" she asked, an easy smile gracing her angular features. Daniel blinked and mumbled an awkward apology before stepping aside, allowing her to enter his rather spacious quarters. Inside lay a cot with a navy blue sheet draped atop the mattress, a small steel grey table in the centre of the room with an omni-graphic display at the centre, allowing for multiple visitors to check on briefings and other reports. A steel blue dresser and drawers stood on the opposite side to the bed, and in between them lay a viewing port, not that there was much to see besides the darkness of space at that moment.

"So this is what an officer's quarters looks like in the navy of the 22nd Century," Claire said, observing the interior of Daniel's room.

"Certainly beats where we came from," Daniel replied. "Take a seat at the desk of you want," he said, pulling up a chair.

"Always knew you were a gentleman Cap," Claire murmured appreciatively, sitting down and crossing one leg over the other. She fixed Daniel with an expectant look.

"What?" Daniel asked.

"Get a girl a drink?"

"No luck there I'm afraid. No alcohol except for shore leave."

"Not even for officers?" Claire seemed genuinely surprised.

"Not even for officers, though I'm all but convinced the Captain and the XO have a bottle or two stashed somewhere."

"So why don't you?"

"I don't know. More important things to be doing than getting booze I guess?"

"Yeah… a war with a race of sentient machines… and the Ceph too." In that moment Claire seemed almost morose. It was so unlike her that Daniel began to stare.

"You think we actually have a shot? All of us I mean?" she asked suddenly, all trace of humour gone, replaced by a concern deeper than the oceans of Earth. Shifting his brain into gear, Daniel tried to think of something to try and ease her.

"Well look at it this way: Captain Shepard's daughter killed one herself. If she could do it, then surely five nanosuits can do it too… what am I talking about, we _have _done it. Remember the Reaper on that chunk of rock we hit barely a month ago? We _killed _that thing. Atomised it. Left no trace of it standing."

"Yeah but it looked like it had been buried there for decades. What about the live ones? The ones that are breaking out of Batarian space and spreading right this moment?"

"All right, stop this. Now. If you're despairing then you might as well put a gun to your head and save the Reapers and the Ceph the trouble of hunting your ass down and killing you. The odds are probably long and perhaps not even in our favour but damnit we _are _going to find a way to turn it around. With all the races of the galaxy fighting alongside each other and all the fleets, we won't just beat the Reapers, we'll erase them. Send them packing back to whatever hole they crawled out from. But to do that, we – _I –_ need you on the ball so cut this bullshit out or I'll put you in the brig so fast it'll make your suit spin."

Claire said nothing for a moment. Finally a lazy grin replaced her forlorn expression and she threw a casual salute.

"Yes sir, Cap. Never doubted you for a moment Cap. Magnificent speech Cap, always knew you had it in you–"

"Okay, okay, that's enough flattery little Miss Smartass." But Daniel was grinning too. A pleasant silence descended upon Daniel's quarters until Claire decided to break it.

"So, about that dinne–"

She was interrupted by the intercom.

"_All Senior and Junior officers are to report to the bridge. Say again all Senior and Junior officers are to report to the bridge by order of Captain Shepard. Failure to arrive will result in…"_

Daniel was already halfway out the door. He half-turned to Claire, who was sat at the table appearing slightly awkward.

"Sorry, another time maybe."

"Don't worry about it Cap. I get it, get going, it's probably important."

Daniel very much doubted Captain Shepard would authorise the use of the ship's intercom for anything that wasn't of the utmost import, but he kept his thoughts to himself as he made his way to the elevator that would take him to the bridge of the _Retribution._

**-X-**

Officers cloistered around the bridge, all seemed unusually quiet. Captain Shepard stood overlooking the navigational display in the centre of the bridge just as Daniel joined the rest of the officers. Daniel noticed that Director Dunn and Executive Kryik were also present, and the former seemed more than a little agitated if the way he was clenching and unclenching his jaw was any indication. As if sensing that everyone was now present she turned from the display and stood with her hands clasped behind her back at ease. Despite her age, she seemed impossibly alert.

"Gentlemen," she began, her voice like steel, "we have received an urgent communique from Fleet Command… Admiral Hackett wants us back at Sol. Stat."

Sol… that was humanity's Solar System; the cradle of mankind. Why would the Brass want the fleets to come home with the Reapers almost on the front porch, Daniel wondered to himself. Surely the best option for destroying them lay in banding together with the other races and uniting to destroy the threat that would soon assail them.

"Apparently we've lost all contact with the outer colonies. The ones closest to Batarian space. I won't lie you to, this is, in all likelihood, the enemy we've been preparing to fight since we picked up our… special cargo," she motioned towards Daniel, who became suddenly aware of several curious stares. "We are to rendezvous with the fleets by Earth where Fleet Command will brief us on our course of action. This is it ladies and gentlemen. Keep yourselves sharp and be ready. Dismissed."

The officers filed out muttering and whispering to each other. Daniel waited for them all to leave. Captain Shepard still stood at the top of the nav display, as if expecting that he would have questions.

"Staff Lieutenant," she acknowledged him with a curt nod.

"Captain. I know this is a directive from Fleet Command but why are we turning inwards? My team and I could act as a scouting force, with the nano-modules installed–"

"Installing the modules is precisely the reason we're going back to Earth." Director Dunn interrupted. Daniel had thought he might have dispersed with the other officers. Daniel indicated with a gesture for Dunn to go on.

"Put simply: we don't have the kit to install the modules you recovered from the lab. We've got the cradle yes and the monitoring and some basic maintenance equipment too, but these modules… they're new, Lieutenant. We have only the vaguest reports of what effect these modules will have on your suits and how to install them and to do that, we need to use my facilities back on Earth."

Daniel frowned. "Don't you have any closer facilities?"

Dunn looked at him as if he'd sprouted a second head, "Away from the sanctuary of Earth and all the defences surrounding the Sol system? You've got to be joking. It may not seem like it, but I've got more enemies than most would think conceivably possible."

"Not that impossible to believe," Captain Shepard murmured under her breath, her lips pressing into a thin line, "but he's correct. The installation facilities reside solely on Earth and while I'm sure you and your squad would do a valuable service were I to consent to an operation in the outer colonies, we would have no way of retrieving you once you go planetside. The Reapers operate in space, and even with our upgraded armaments one like Sovereign outguns us several times over."

She paused, taking a breath. "More to the point there is quite literally nothing coming out of the colonies besides a few civilian craft who all talk of devastation unlike anything they can describe. For all we'd know we could well fly right into the midst of a million Reapers. Your desire to fight is admirable, Lieutenant, but until you get those modules installed, you and your team will remain aboard the _Retribution_. Once this is achieved and the Board of Admirals meets and decides on a definitive course of action, we'll see about putting the hurt on."

Daniel chewed on the inside of his mouth a moment before relenting. Giving Captain Shepard a smart salute, he turned smartly on his heel and left for the elevator to give his team the news.

**-X-**

Earth was… different.

When he had last seen his home, it had been in a sorry state. Entire cities were derelict and crumbling. Vast wastelands littered the landscapes like miniature Sahara deserts, bone dry and bereft of all life. The Earth as it existed now had not merely recovered. It had thrived. The knowledge and the sheer, overwhelming physical proof of this fact almost made Daniel drop to his knees in reverence of man's ability not just to survive, but to adapt, to endure.

Skyscrapers miles higher than the tallest building of Razor's time dotted the vast cityscape. Buildings shone a pristine white that almost dazzled as the sunlight reflected off the material. Hundreds of metres below, the clean (_clean_) streets bustled with civilians going about their everyday lives. The CryNet building was a hive of activity and dozens of employees had either paused or stopped entirely to stare at Razor Team who were kitted out in their nanosuits. Director Dunn, Executive Kryik and several other staff stood before them, examining the nearby nanosuit cradle and the modules Razor had recovered.

"All right," Dunn said, clapping his hands and turning away from the technical staff whom he was previously engaged in discussion with. "Who fancies going first?"

Razor shared a collective glance before Aakash stepped forwards, rubbing his hands together excitedly, "I'll go. Let's see what tech these guys cooked up for us."

Dunn showed him into the cradle. Aakash sat down, spreading his arms and settling them into the grooves. The cradle whirred and Aakash jumped a little as the cradle interfaced with his suit.

"Always makes me jump a little," he said as he settled back and relaxed.

"Please no talking," a stern-faced woman said, "any movement may have an effect on our readings and, consequently, the implementation of the nanosuit modules."

Aakash said nothing in reply. The woman nodded in approval.

What followed was, in Daniel's opinion, a rather tedious ten minute wait while the CryNet staff checked the suit's functionality and fixed the module. Curiously enough it appeared to be in the form of an injection. Daniel noticed Aleska scratch her arm nervously. She'd hated needles before, but ever since the incident with the tick pit they had almost become anathema to her. It made for some rather painful medical checkups as the rest of Razor had, sometimes, had to hold her down to make sure she was properly inoculated against any natural or artificial Ceph-developed disease (that mankind had found a way to inoculate against).

Finally Aakash stood up from the cradle. He rotated his arms several times and shook out his legs, getting his blood flowing.

"Feel okay Aak?" Eoin asked.

"Yeah… yeah I feel good…" Aakash replied, clenching and unclenching his hands. "More than good even. The suit feels lighter than it did before…" suddenly he lashed out at the air with a fist. Several of the staff jumped at the sudden movement and one dropped a clipboard.

"Sorry," he apologised before lashing out with several more jabs. Even with SECOND and the suit enhancing the reflexes of Razor the punches were a blur.

"Oh yeah… this is pretty cool boss. You definitely got to try this out." Daniel could tell the Corporal was grinning beneath his visor.

"Well it'll be luck of the draw if he does, these modules are all different." Dunn interjected; he turned and took a clipboard from one of the technical staff.

"All right, if this thing is right – and if we've given you the correct module – it should have reduced the suit mass by a good deal. You will be quicker and your suit's speed mode will drain less power. Your power jumps too will be higher and drain less energy… ah yeah, before I forget, we've also given your suit battery an upgrade. It'll last for much longer than it would have before so you should be able to function for extended periods of time in enemy territory, seeing how we don't know if the Reapers use plug sockets and all."

"Thanks a lot," Aakash said appreciatively before stepping out of the way for the next member of Razor.

Aleska went next, and after her went Eoin, then Claire, and finally Daniel himself. Aleska got an upgrade to her suit visor that actually allowed her to make long-range hacks on equipment, as well as a boost to her suit's armour function, allowing her to deflect more damage and move quicker. Eoin got another visor function that highlighted potential hostiles at a range of 100 metres, even through solid walls. It utilised thermal imagery tech however, so it wouldn't work in hot environments. In addition to this he received a function which highlighted enemy footsteps and his stealth mode faded in and out quicker. Claire received a module which boosted her stealth mode, rendering her perfectly invisible and reducing her energy consumption while moving quickly; even standing right next to her with his nanovision enabled Daniel was unable to make her out. To make it even better was the fact that it rendered her immune to thermal imaging, and the nanofibre layers on her feet were softened so that she barely made a whisper even while sprinting. Daniel got a jack-of-all trades module, reducing his overall energy consumption for speed, cloak, armour, and a buff to his suit's power mode but also gaining a command input allowing him to see everything his team saw through their suit visors, which he could also send to his team. Dunn wisely suggested that Daniel perform several training exercises with this function in order for Razor to get used to it.

"Wonder what Shepard's doing now," Eoin wondered, staring out the window at the lively city.

"The Captain?" said Aakash, bemused. "Think she said she has the _Retribution _on standby around one of Jupiter's moons."

"Io," Aleska confirmed.

"No I meant her daughter; Commander Shepard. Last I heard she's here on Earth because she blew up a Batarian Mass Relay."

"If that's the case then I imagine she'll be detained somewhere, probably even court-martialled," Claire said, adding her own two cents to the conversation.

"What her? Nah. From what I've heard she's a hero: saved the Council on the Citadel in the Sovereign attack, destroyed a race of aliens called the Collectors and that's just the _really _big stuff. From what the crew on the _Ret_ say, she's probably the most famous human alive. A living legend. There's no way they'd discharge her from the services," Aakash reasoned aloud.

Daniel was about to give his own opinion when he noticed one of the CryNet staff enter the cradle room. He seemed spooked as he whispered softly, but hurriedly to Dunn. Whatever the news was, it was evidently disturbing stuff as Executive Kryik, who had leaned in to listen, opened his mandibles in shock. Dunn seemed to drain of all colour, and appeared the most unnerved Daniel had ever seen him. Dunn placed a hand to his forehead before turning sharply to Razor Team.

"I sincerely apologise ladies and gentlemen but we need to wrap this up as so–" he was interrupted by a strange, mechanical droning noise that seemed to echo through the atmosphere. Everyone froze and turned their attentions outside. The clouds seemed to darken… no… there was something.

"Oh God…" Dunn breathed. "They're here. I never imagined they would but they are… don't tell me the fleets…" he suddenly swivelled around before grabbing the collar of the closest CryNet staff – in this case it was the stern woman who had reprimanded Aakash for moving in the Cradle.

"Tell everyone to get off-world now or – failing that – to hide in as deep a hole as they can. Send all sensitive data to my personal cache, the rest will have to be stored in the underground vault and once you stuff as much as you can in there; you seal it off. I don't care whether you have to bring the entire building down or weld it shut but you make sure that vault is safe, understand?" The woman nodded hurriedly, her attention diverted between the phenomena occurring outside and Dunn's desperate expression. He released her and the woman seemed to deflate a little.

"Well? _Go!_" Dunn roared. The woman started before hurriedly turning and rushing out the door. Dunn turned back to Razor.

"This is the worst-case scenario," Dunn started, "I'm going to need you and your team to get some experimental tech – weapons designed specifically for you and your team to fight the Reapers – from the fifteenth floor. Me and Kryik as well as some other essential personnel will make our way off-world. If all goes well – or as well as things can possibly go at this point – we'll see you on the _Retribution_."

Daniel, who had grown increasingly uncomfortable, finally reached the terrible conclusion.

"They're here aren't they?" he asked, his throat dry.

Dunn said nothing; didn't even nod or shake his head.

"We'll see you soon Razor. Stay alive… that's all I'll ask," and with that, he and Executive Kryik left, presumably to extricate whatever data they needed before evacuating off-planet.

The awful droning was back, only this time it sounded louder. The clouds grew darker before finally, what looked like the leg of a vast, colossal insect punched through, then another, and another, until finally the long, smooth body descended and the enemy finally made itself known. The gargantuan machine landed in the centre of the city, knocking over several buildings as it landed. Already Daniel could hear screams echo from the streets. Then another one descended, and another, another one there, like an awful rainfall, promising nothing more than death and utter annihilation. Some of the legs of these great machines splayed and from them shot baleful red beams which tore through entire buildings and sent them toppling gracelessly to the earth below. Explosions rippled throughout the city and the screaming outside reached a fever pitch.

The Reapers had come to Earth.

**-X-**

**I toyed with the idea of elongating this chapter, but my tutor has taught me that the best chapter endings are hooks. So, sorry, but you're in for another wait before Razor tangoes with the Reaper ground forces.**

**As always, readers are appreciated. Reviewers doubly so, and constructive criticism even more than that.**

**Until next time,**

**zips**


	7. To War

**A Razor's Edge**

**Chapter Seven: To War**

The elevators were down.

Daniel found it almost hilarious: the world as they knew it was coming to a violent crash all around them. Every time one of the colossal machines outside let loose another stream of red-hot molten metal hundreds of people died and Daniel was worried about the goddamn elevators not working.

People – the various CryNet employees, some still in their white labcoats, others in security uniform – streamed through the building down the staircases past Razor Team. It was like wading through a river made of flesh and pulsing limbs and the sensation took Daniel's mind back to the cavern with the Reaper core, which had stared at them like a baleful, unblinking blue eye, and the dozens of husks that had assailed them. He shuddered in revulsion, shaking off the memory as the throng of bodies descended another floor.

Floor 22.

Damnit this was taking far too long. A thought crossed his mind and Daniel brought up the building schematics. The building was lengthy, no doubt about that, stretching more than fifty storeys high with the company logo framed along the middle of the building for all to see. Below the great metallic lettering was a sloping segment. Entirely glass, it sloped all the way from the nineteenth floor to the fourteenth and it only got steeper as you went further down until you finally reached the fourteenth where it ended abruptly.

If they didn't land it right then all of them were dead, but at the rate they were going–

An explosion rocked the building. The crowd stumbled collectively, some lost their balance altogether and fell, disappearing under the press of bodies.

That settled it. The Reapers would probably level the building before they reached the fifteenth and whatever tech Dunn wanted them to recover at the rate they were going.

'Razor, on me.'

Daniel engaged his armour mode and waded through the crowd, barging a way into main lobby of the twenty-second floor. His team joined him shortly after and Razor found itself in a maze of cubicles. Twenty-two mostly dealt with IT so many of the cubicles possessed various consoles, monitors and keyboards. Daniel led his team through; following the waypoint he had set in his suit visors' HUD until they reached a large glass window on the other end of the building overlooking the city.

'Okay Cap, what's the idea?' Claire asked. The others looked attentively at their leader, awaiting an answer.

Daniel peered through the glass, craning his neck so that he might get a better view of what was below them. A smaller variant of Reaper was – alarmingly enough – running rampant at the very foot of the CryNet headquarters, its main weapon indiscriminately tearing through vehicles and crowds of fleeing bystanders alike. He took a breath to steady himself and grit his teeth, trying to block out the feeling of helplessness that threatened to overwhelm him as he looked on at the carnage these giant machines inflicted.

He failed, and a keen sense of hopeless overtook him. He almost felt like laughing. How could he possibly have deluded himself into thinking he and his squad could make a difference against such foes. Anything they could do would amount to nothing more than scratching their paint job. He and his squad were damn good soldiers but they were grunts in the long haul, and the weapons of these Reapers would wipe them from the face of the planet like so many other soldiers.

For the first time since the attack too, Daniel noticed the flaming debris falling from the sky. For a moment he thought it might be more Reapers until he saw one piece smash into a residential area, crushing the buildings and anyone in it like the fist of an angry god. He realised with a chill that it was a piece of a starship – a human ship. Despair swept through him as he realised full well what the Reapers were telling them all with this attack. '_You knew we were coming. You prepared and it still wasn't enough. We will sweep aside any feeble resistance you offer and then you will burn and wither and die like so many before you.'_

'Cap?' A voice jolted him out of his reverie. He turned his head and saw his team looking at him, their posture telling him of their uncertainty.

A wave of self-loathing swept through him. He was their leader and he had almost let the weight of the odds crush him. It didn't matter if he and his squad couldn't directly combat the Reapers, he decided. Whatever the demands this war would require, Razor Team would not only meet them, but exceed them. Fresh determination surged through him as Daniel clenched his fist and shattered the window with a blow. He turned to his squad.

'We're taking a shortcut,' he said, simply. No one moved.

'Well?' Daniel asked. 'The enemy's here. Let's not keep them waiting.'

And then he jumped.

**-X-**

He had fallen barely twenty metres before he immediately regretted his idea. The air whipped past him and vertigo ruled his senses for a moment. Looking out on the burning city extending below him almost made him want to throw up. Instead he squeezed his eyes shut and had SECOND plot a series of waypoints telling him where he should land. The moment he reopened his eyes a flight path was plotted out before his eyes. He felt a smile spread across his face. It was not just the suits and the omni-tools; the hard-wired AI SECOND had received innumerable upgrades (strictly illegal as AIs, even those like SECOND, had been banned following the Geth Uprising) and path-plotting and battlefield landscape analysis were merely a couple of the new features that useful little tool now boasted.

Daniel flared his suit's thrusters – designed initially for underwater combat, but modified by CryNet to serve more effectively in zero-G warzones – and adjusted his position so that he followed the desired pathway. The great sloping glass roof rushed towards him. If he deviated from his path even a millimetre or assumed the wrong position at the wrong time then he would hit the wrong floor if he was lucky… and bounce of the roof and plummet all the way to the street if he was not. His armour mode could only do so much and even with the upgrades he doubted very much that he would survive such an impact.

Daniel flared his thrusters once more before engaging his armour mode and bracing himself for the impact.

Daniel crashed through the glass like a boulder. Even with the suit's armour mode engaged he felt every one of his bones shake as he smashed through the glass. His suit power fell to barely 30% and then a second later he crashed into the fifteenth floor proper; the force of the collision drove him to his knees and drained his suit power entirely. His entire body hurt, but he'd made it. He was still in one piece.

'Look out below!' he heard Carroll cry through the comms.

Ignoring his protesting limbs Daniel forced himself upright and out of the way. Mere moments later another nanosuited warrior smashed through the glass roof and landed inches from Daniel's site of impact. His HUD told him that it was, indeed, Carroll. Daniel roughly pulled the man aside as the rest of the squad began to make their own landings. Barely a minute later all five members of Razor Team stood in a rough semicircle rubbing their aching limbs or muttering pained expletives under their breath.

Daniel took the brief pause to take stock of their surroundings. They appeared to be in a large foyer, a glass railing separated them from a fifteen floor drop and looked out at the city, which continued to burn as more Reapers drifted down from beyond the cloud formations, their evil red weaponry cutting a swathe of devastation wherever they fired. Unable to look for much longer, he turned inwards, spotting two elevator doors (which were still disabled from the looks of things) at the centre of the foyer. On the left wing was a sealed door, a neon sign denoted it as a 'Testing Chamber'. On the opposite wing was another door marked 'Research and Development'.

Daniel pointed to the right wing and made for the door. No sooner was he a metre from the portal when it opened suddenly and a security guard stepped out, wielding a cumbersomely large double-barrelled cannon. The man was built like Arnold Schwarzenegger's big brother but even he appeared to strain at the weight of the bulky weapon, which made it all but clear to Daniel that this might be one of the things that Dunn had asked him to retrieve. The guard's eyes widened when he saw the five nanosuited soldiers strolling towards him, but he relaxed after a moment and set the huge gun down, almost dropping it to the floor.

'You must be them,' the guard said, sweat running down his face. Dried blood caked his left cheek but Daniel's visor picked up no sign of injury.

Daniel nodded and motioned for Aleska to take the cannon, who hefted it almost effortlessly, much to the guard's awe. Recovering quickly, the guard – and Daniel saw that his tag identified him as 'Simmons' – motioned for Daniel and his team to follow him inside.

'Me and a handful of others were the only ones present here when the Director gave the announcement. We got a separate communique asking us to hold the fort here and open the vault up for you and your team in order to get the experimental stuff out.' Simmons led them into what appeared at first to be a technological development lab. Work benches and desks lined the room and various pieces of machinery were cluttered about. A large, circular door loomed at the very end of the room, appearing like a great, metal eye observing anyone in the lab. Five people– another guard and four R&D personnel in overalls stood by it, each seeming more nervous than the last.

'The vault's just beyond that door. I was told the four techies would show you what everything was. Me and Burt there–' he motioned towards the other guard, '– we were just told to keep this place locked tight until you arrived, and then get out once you took the stuff.'

Simmons paused for a moment, before looking at Daniel. The guard towered above him but Daniel thought the man looked so fragile he might snap if Daniel so much as touched him in that moment.

'What's it like out there? I mean, I looked for a moment before I locked myself and the others in here and I saw explosions and that awful noise but…' his voice fell.

'Not going to sugar coat it. It's bad. Worse than anyone could have imagined even,' Daniel replied after some thought. Simmons' face fell.

'We were told something big was coming. No specifics, but we were all advised to try and get our families off-world if they weren't already…' Simmons cast a look at the door they had just entered through.

'Did you?' Daniel asked before he could stop himself.

'Nah… nah there wasn't a need to bother for me,' Simmons replied, a forlorn expression lining his face. 'Only family I ever had was my ma and… well, she died two years back, on the Citadel of all places during the Geth attack.'

The brawny guard sighed heavily.

'Probably just as well. She loved this city, said she grew up in it all her life. Seeing… whatever is going on outside? I think that would've killed her.'

Daniel said nothing as they finally approached the large door. The other guard, Burt, nodded to Simmons as one of the R&D personnel opened the vault.

It was a great deal more expansive than Daniel expected, and it was _packed_. Weapons of all sorts sat encased behind thick, bullet-proof shielding and he had little doubt that Razor Team, who had no doubt seen almost every weapon the galaxy had to offer up until that point, were all privately gawking at the assortment of weaponry laid out before them.

'You're Razor Team, right?' a voice called, and Daniel found himself looking at four individuals in sleek overalls, the one who called out to them was a youthful looking woman whose name tag read "Sobers". Daniel nodded in reply.

'Good, now we can show you what all this crap does and get the hell out of here.'

With that, she took Razor on an abbreviated technical tour of the gear Razor were expected to take with them. Several heavy weapons; a fusion rocket launcher, two heavy auto-cannons that fired acid-coated shells that exploded shortly after impact, and a couple of impossibly large weapons that looked like massive sniping rifles so unwieldy they could only be fired from a prone position even with the nanosuit. Daniel took one of the auto-cannons, while Claire and Aakash helped themselves to the sniping rifles, Eoin took the rocket launcher and Aleska grabbed the last auto-cannon. Each of them took several pouches positively laden with ammunition.

Then they came to the much more tactical stuff. Combat webbing crafted specially for the nanosuit fitted snugly onto them, allowing them to store their extra kit without it getting in the way. It even came with a miniature backup shield generator which would kick in if their primary shields were depleted in combat, unfortunately it wouldn't last for too long under sustained assault, but Daniel was confident the extra defensive layer would provide Razor all the time needed to find themselves out of a prickly situation. Then there were grapnels, enhanced medi-gel dispensers and another upgrade to SECOND that held updated information on every known Reaper unit the squad might encounter, including weak-spots and other tactical information on the foe.

'This,' Sobers said, coming to the final exhibit, 'is probably our most favourite piece of work, it's certainly the most intricate, and you'll probably love what it can do – we certainly did. You might recall a neat little weapon called the Typhoon back in your time?'

Daniel did, and he remembered fondly its devastating effects on any Ceph dumb enough to be standing within its effective range, which was disparagingly short compared to more typical armaments of the time.

'Well, we got our hands on its schematics thanks to Director Dunn and we've given it a 22nd Century makeover. The firing mechanism is no different to any modern weapon you'll find in the galaxy today: there's a central metallic chip and you just need to keep a thermal clip in the slot to keep it running until the chip finally runs dry, where you can just snap the thing open – that's the switch hidden in the cleft just before the butt of the weapon – and replace it. Simple.

'The real beauty though, is that we replaced a few of the more traditional mechanisms with some nifty tech we pinched from some Reaper tech observations we've made,' and then, as if suddenly realising what that meant, hurried to add: 'all strictly observed for any signs of indoctrination of course… and there were a… few incidents. But I think the gains we made were worth it.

She went on to explain: 'Each bullet travels through a tightly-strung electro-magnetic coil where it's accelerated to several times the speed of sound, _and_ contains its own miniature mass effect field that should punch through almost any conventional armour you'll face in the field – even the Reapers can't field ground troops capable of stopping a gun that fires more than a thousand rounds in a heartbeat each travelling at more than 1,700 metres a second, and that's without taking the aforementioned mass effect fields into account, which should also screw with any biotic units you encounter.'

Daniel was impressed, even moreso by the considerably more ergonomic design of the weapon. It looked like the Typhoon of old, but it was sleeker, more compact, the barrel longer, likely to accommodate the coils. Sobers smirked as she took the weapon gingerly from the rack and held it out like an ancient, legendary weapon of old towards Daniel's outstretched arms.

'I give you, ladies and gentleman, the Cyclone, with an effective range of 500 metres before weapon spread starts to take its toll.'

Forget impressed, Daniel was in love, and from the way he could see his squad reverently took hold of their own weapons, he could tell he was far from the only one holding that particular sentiment.

'We've taken the liberty of pretty much stuffing your webbing with spare chips to feed the guns, they should be capable of keeping up almost an hour and a half's sustained fire, provided your supply of thermal clips holds out at least. Regrettably though, thanks to the way we designed the Cyclone, only certain metals will suffice as ammunition. The others will just break up in the transit from the coil to the muzzle and rip through the inner workings; we went through enough failures to work at least that much out.' One of the other technicians remarked as he checked over Aakash's weapon.

'Well then,' Sobers said as she stepped back from Razor, 'I rather think that's our work done.' She cast a glance over her colleagues and the two security guards. 'Shall we head for the emergency exit?'

With no more affirmation than a collection of nods, the six CryNet personnel petered out of the labs after wishing Razor all the luck in the world. The five nano-soldiers stood stock still for a moment after they'd left, taking all they'd been given in. Aakash gave voice to his thoughts first, as he usually did.

'If there weren't an invasion going on outside, I think this might be the best day of my life.'

The reminder of the aforementioned invasion came with another shake of the building, coupled with another hideous, otherworldly drone that seemed almost to echo within Daniel's skull. Snapped so abruptly from their reveries, Daniel gave the order to move out–

–before a colossal metal limb crashed through the wall, gouging a great opening in the side of CryNet's headquarters.

'Holy shit!' Aleska barked the stark admittance of her surprise uncharacteristic of her usually cool demeanour.

'Back! Get away!' Daniel bellowed and without any complaints, Razor bolted for the exit, racing as far from the mechanical leg that undoubtedly belonged to one of the great leviathans assaulting Earth.

It was too late, however, and the floor beneath them gave way as the leg shredded through the foundation of the looming skyscraper. Eoin, who was trailing behind, fell first, then Aakash and Aleska, and then finally Daniel and Claire, dropping a full fifteen floors to the ground below – double the distance they had dropped to reach the fifteenth floor.

'Use your suit thrusters to try cushioning your fall!' Daniel ordered, thinking quickly as he fell, SECOND already plotting the safest course it could predict in the rapidly changing scenery.

'Anything else Cap?' Claire shouted over the roar of the Reaper that appeared to be single-mindedly set on levelling the CryNet building.

'Set your suits on Armour mode and pray like all hell,' Daniel suggested dryly as the ground rushed up once more to meet him.

If there was a God up there somewhere, Daniel fancied he was not so much smiling on them as practically lavishing his blessings upon them, as despite an even more bone-crunching shake upon landing, he appeared to be in one piece. Unfortunately, however, he was on his own. The Reaper had stormed right on through the CryNet HQ and the collapse had kicked up a storm of dust so thick that Daniel could barely see more than a handful of metres ahead of him, even SECOND was flummoxed by the conditions, though from his squadmates' life signs and his command program, allowing him to see whatever they saw through their suit visors, he at least knew they were all alive, though Eoin's seemed erratic. Daniel swept his gaze upon the mass of rubble and hoped fervently that enough of the staff had managed to escape before the building had come crumbling down.

He was about to have SECOND bring up a three-dimensional minimap of the area in his suit's HUD to work out his approximate location, but a sudden, savage blow staggered him and he cancelled the command. Wheeling around, he found himself face to face with a howling husk, its mechanical implants glowing a baleful blue as it screeched.

'Shut up,' Daniel snarled, engaging his suit's power mode and slugging the husk in its ugly face. The blow tore its jaw from its head and knocked the monstrosity away like a ragdoll, landing in a pathetic heap just on the edge of Daniel's field of vision. Through the background din of Reaper weapons opening up, the screams of thousands upon thousands of unarmed civilians and the pathetically small chatter of weapons fire as Earth's military levied what pitiful might it could against the invaders, Daniel could make out more howling.

That meant more husks were on the way.

How exactly they could see with all the dust he didn't know, but regardless, they were charging towards him in long, loping strides, arms swinging in anticipation of imminent aggression.

'Fine,' Daniel breathed to himself, 'looks like I get to try out this new toy early.'

With a relish he brought up the Cyclone, which he had managed to hold onto and avoid damaging in the fall. And flipped the safety switch off. For a brief moment he hoped that all the dust wouldn't have fouled its inner workings before he squeezed the trigger.

He needn't have worried. There was a sharp, loud _brrrt_, and the upper torso of the closest husk disintegrated, leaving only its legs which collapsed pathetically to the rubble-strewn ground. The burst had also ripped through one of the beasts behind it, leaving it splayed out on the ground as various fluids leaked from it.

Pausing only for a moment to admire the Cyclone's effects, he wheeled on the source of the next closest howl; another squeeze of the trigger removed that little problem. Then something impacted against his head and his shield power dropped a fraction. Tracers blazed a path around him and Daniel realised he was under fire. The nano-soldier whirled around; finger tight on the trigger as he spun, and a trio of misshapen figures dropped as hundreds of bullets tore through them.

He had no time to investigate the bodies, however, as even more projectiles hissed through the thick clouds of dust, most whipping by him with no ill effect, a handful, however, clattered off his shields, draining them to half power in moments and Daniel dropped, cursing softly to himself. It was only once he listened, however, that he realised he recognised the chatter of the weaponry opening up on him.

Curious, he engaged his suit's cloak and stalked carefully forwards in the direction of the gunfire, keeping a careful eye on his suit's energy on the bottom right hand corner of his HUD. All of a sudden the gunfire ceased, and distinctly human shapes began to form in the dust. The way they moved was unmistakable; these were military troops or thereabouts, crack soldiers. So why in the hell were they shooting at him and not the Reapers?

His answer came soon enough as they emerged into view. There were six of them, each clad in thick combat armour with white and black padding, one possessed thicker armour than the rest, and gave quick, silent hand signals instructing them to fan out and encircle the area they believe to have Daniel locked down inside. He looked on, quietly impressed at their discipline, which suddenly evaporated when a thick, deep voice from the leader intoned:

'Remember, we need them intact, bring their shields down and then toss the electro-grenades.'

Oh well, Daniel thought to himself, they were fairly good, all things considered. But why on earth did they want him and his teammates? For he was certain the leader had been talking about Razor. He made a mental note to leave that one alive as he closed in silently on the closest operative, noticing for the first time the symbol emblazoned on the shoulder pads. Cerberus. That raised even more questions, questions Daniel was determined to get answers to as he drew his combat knife and closed on his victim.

Uncloaking swiftly, he looped an arm around the Cerberus operative and plunged the tip of the blade into a gap in the neck of the soldier's armour, severing his jugular. The man was dead in moments; blood leaking from the wound in his neck as Daniel quietly lowered the body to the ground.

He had barely finished the task when more gunfire rattled towards him, and his shields flared into life to protect him from the assault. Daniel cursed inwardly and let the body drop before engaging his cloak once more and melting back into the dust clouds.

'He's invisible!' he heard one of the Cerberus troops cry, and he watched them regroup and cast wary looks around them at the dust that continued to encapsulate them. If Daniel guessed right, the leader of the Cerberus team could monitor his team's life signs just as Daniel could his own, and had simply pointed his troops in the direction of their recently deceased comrade once he had struck. Some of his earlier approval returned, though it gave him precious little comfort.

The Cerberus squad gradually began to fan out, leaving them far too widespread for a grenade to take out, and eventually Daniel decided that he had wasted enough time; his own team was still out there and the Reapers certainly weren't going to wait for him to get his act together. Marking each commando's position with SECOND's observation tool, he brought up his Cyclone rifle, and abruptly uncloaked behind two Cerberus troopers before shredding them with two quick bursts of fire. He then whirled in the direction of the remaining three and, marking out the leader, dispatched two with cold, ruthless efficiency, nodding in grim satisfaction as both dropped to the ruined earth as little more than piles of savaged flesh and armour.

He sprinted towards the leader, who let loose with his assault rifle – a weapon of distinctly human origin if he was any judge – which clattered harmlessly off his shields before Daniel was on top of him, a quick jab snapping the Cerberus team leader's head to the side before a more powerful haymaker dropped him to the floor and shattered his helmet. Kicking aside his dropped weapon Daniel took hold of the soldier and hauled him roughly up by his neck.

'All right spook,' Daniel snarled at him through his visor, 'I want…' his voice trailed off as he beheld the sight the agent's helmet had concealed from view. Implants uncomfortably reminiscent of those present in the Reaper husks adorned his grimacing face and Daniel almost dropped him in his shock.

The hesitation proved a mistake, as the agent suddenly seized up before his face exploded, Daniel's shields drained completely from bone shrapnel and he was momentarily blinded before SECOND filtered the visual disturbance to manageable levels. Once he regained his vision he checked the body but he needn't have bothered: the agent's face was a bloody ruin and he was most certainly dead. Searching the remains provided no clues as to what they were doing trying to abduct Daniel and his team so eventually he gave up and began searching for his team.

As he began his search his comms picked up a signal from Hannah Shepard's ship.

'–o Razor, this is Mother come in, are you –– this?'

'One to Mother, you're fuzzy and it's breaking up every couple words but I'm reading you.' Daniel replied, engaging his suit's cloak to ensure he wasn't attacked while he was talking.

'Glad to hear you Razor we –– the entire building, what the –– on down there?'

'Reaper brought the whole damn thing down, my team is scattered and I'm trying to locate them as we speak but there's dust everywhere and Reaper ground forces are present,' he paused, before adding, 'also I've got what appears to be a Cerberus commando team here, six in total. I neutralised five and took the leader down but his head exploded before I could get anything out of him, some kind of preventive measure in the event of capture I'd assume.'

'Say again Razor it sounded almost –– there were _Cerberus _personnel down there––'

'Confirm Mother, I have got six dead Cerberus commandos here. Chatter I picked up indicates they were likely here for me and my team. What for I don't know and I'd say it'd be safe to assume they'd probably be interested in poking around CryNet HQ as well before I mopped them up.'

Silence answered him for a moment before Captain Hannah Shepard spoke again.

'Copy that Razor, probably just as well –– blew the building when it did, who knows what that asshole –– down in his lair. We're sending a shuttle to extract –– but he'll need an idea of where you'll be.'

Daniel had SECOND bring up an updated map of the area, noting with a grimace that several other skyscrapers appeared to have been toppled by the merciless assault of the Reapers. He marked a spot by the river that split the city not half a kilometre away from his current location and sent it to Hannah, hoping it'd get through the chaos that permeated the city.

'Waypoint received Razor he'll –– your team there ASAP. Godspeed Razor. Mother out.'

Daniel didn't reply, turning to make sure there was nothing that wanted him dead close by he deactivated his cloak and set about the task of locating his team.

Aleska and Aakash he found in short order, the two having met up fairly quickly and holding a crater from what appeared to be almost a battalion of husks, plus a handful of new forms he hadn't seen before that looked like mangled Batarians. Claire and Eoin they found together as well, the former of which was standing guard over the Irishman, who had broken a leg in the fall but, thankfully, managed to keep his weaponry intact and was unloading it with gusto on a charging mob of husks and more of the Batarian Reaper forms who appeared to prefer engaging at range to charging like blood-crazed berserkers.

In half an hour they cross the perilous distance to their evac point – a statue commemorating the lives of those lost in the First Contact War – that sat on a perch overlooking the river. Smoke billowed from the ruins of the city and Daniel noticed alarmingly that more and more Reapers appeared to be dropping from orbit to land, unleashing deadly bursts of fire as they fell, toppling yet more buildings and ripping through ever more defences. The amount of fire the Reapers were taking seemed to have been reduced to a dishearteningly token amount, and the amount of gunfire closeby that Daniel recognised was lessening, replaced by the squeal of Reaper weaponry instead.

Aakash and Claire set Eoin down against the memorial statue as they arrived while Daniel surveyed the area. The memorial site was a fairly defensible location, with raised, chest-high walls lining a clear path around the memorial they could use for cover, and with its raised profile they could safely draw a bead on anything wanting a piece of them. After applying some medi-gel to Eoin (mostly for pain relief, as the substance would do nothing to heal a broken limb on its own), Daniel set about placing his three active squadmates in positions allowing their fire lanes to overlap. In moments he had the site secured, which would be scant comfort if a Reaper ship suddenly decided to take an interest in their activity.

'I'm seeing Reaper ground forces close by Cap,' Claire said, no doubt cloaked as they all were for as long as possible in order to avoid attention.

'I see them Two, just let them all run past, they don't need to know we're here.'

Unfortunately that plan went out the window as a new voice suddenly hissed in his ear: 'Look alive boys and girls, your chariot has arrived!'

Daniel twisted sharply and, sure enough, there was a shuttle approaching their position, its side door already sliding open in anticipation of a hot dust-off. The shuttle, however, also drew the attention of the passing Reaper forces, and a collective howl resounded from the mass of them as they charged headlong towards the memorial site.

Daniel cursed, the timing couldn't possibly have been worse, but at least they were almost out of the danger zone. They just had to get on board the shuttle and hope nothing too big thought they were worth shooting down.

'Aak, Aleska, go get Eoin on the shuttle, we'll provide cover,' Eoin started to protest, but Daniel shut him up with a quick rebuke before he checked the status of the thermal clip in his weapon. He still had a few bursts left before he'd need to exchange it. Sighting on the closest hostile, SECOND confirmed that they were well inside the effective range of their weapons.

'Weapons free,' he commanded, before squeezing the trigger. A trail of bullets stitched a line in the ground, ripping apart a whole cluster of husks and a handful of the Batarian forms.

'These things work wonders for crowd control,' Claire crowed as she unleashed a burst of fire, shredding another throng of Reaper troops.

'You could say that again,' Daniel replied as he swapped out the spent thermal clip, replacing it with a new one in seconds before resuming the grisly task of butchering the oncoming wave of husks before it reached them.

'We're on board Captain, get over here! We can cover you from here!' Aakash said over the squad's comm-line.

'Copy that Aak, we're moving back, keep those mechanical morons off our asses,' Daniel replied curtly as he began to withdraw. Several stray shots clipped him as he ran, draining his shields, and he saw Claire turn back to lose one final burst of fire at the approaching swarm before sprinting for the shuttle like all hell was after her, which, as far as Daniel was concerned, wasn't all far off from the mark.

Daniel leapt into the shuttle, Claire hot on his heels and as soon as they were in, the doors shut and the shuttle rose into the air before shooting for the atmosphere while the city burned beneath them. Thankfully, nothing seemed to take much notice of them and they made it into space unscathed, where the pilot took them on a roundabout course for the _Retribution_ in order to avoid the increasing waves of Reaper ships entering the system.

Daniel watched Earth gradually shrink as the distance increased. He felt a strange pang of guilt within him for leaving while so many still remained on Earth, and as they passed the wreckage of the Alliance fleets that had been stationed around Earth he silently swore to himself that he would scour the galaxy free of Reapers before this war was over.

'Doesn't seem real does it?'

Daniel tore his gaze away from his homeworld to see Claire looking over his shoulder.

'Leaving Earth to the Reapers… it feels almost like we're back in the Ceph War, doesn't it? Back when we were constantly giving ground with no way of stopping them.'

'But we did stop them,' Daniel said, 'we stopped them dead and tossed them off our world. We were outmatched and outgunned, but we won in the end. We'll win here too, the only difference now is that we know we're not alone and we know exactly what the Reapers are capable of, and the next time we return to Earth we'll be at the head of an armada, I'm sure of it. And when that happens we'll take back Earth and bomb the Reapers back into the Stone Age.'

Claire didn't reply, she simply nodded and sat beside Aakash, who kept glancing over at Eoin's injured leg like a worried mother hen. Despite all he felt in that moment, Daniel believed everything he said, he had to after all, because he was their leader. They were relics of the 21st Century, of a war long gone but with repercussions still felt in the Galactic community today. They were some of the finest soldiers humanity had ever seen, given the finest training and the finest equipment in order to overcome odds most men would baulk at.

They were Razor Team.

**-X-**

**When I started writing this story back in 2011, I had the vision of this being much more of a 'covert operations' kind of story, with chapters focusing on clean surgical strikes carried out by Razor Team against potential Reaper installations. Only when I brushed up on the lore I realised quite quickly that wasn't going to be even remotely the case outside of the most liberal fanfiction where canon is concerned. So eventually I turned more and more towards the idea of Razor simply battling their way through the inevitable Reaper War, fairly comfortable in the knowledge that Mass Effect 3 would surely deliver a grand, satisfying, epic conclusion to the trilogy.**

**Only… it didn't.**

**To top things off, I found Crysis 3 pretty lacklustre as well, (Crysis 2 as well now that I look back on it without the hype goggles) and as a result I just simply cannot muster up any sort of motivation to continue this story. Normally when I write, I greatly enjoy doing so, and in a minute or so after putting pen to paper, so to speak, it just flows as story threads just seem to come to me, and I'm sure many of you who've written your own stories know the sort of feeling I'm talking about.**

**I didn't enjoy writing this chapter. I had to force myself to put down every syllable of every word and I think it shows quite clearly. I briefly thought of just leaving a short AN and leaving it at that, but one of my biggest pet peeves on this site is authors updating their story just to tell their readers hotly anticipating a fresh chapter that they're bored or going on holiday. I don't think any avid reader deserves that sort of treatment, and since it's been so long since the last update I figured I at least owed my readers a send-off chapter, so this is it. I'll leave the story up for anyone who fancies giving it a flick through but I'm done with it, and I don't think I'll ever change my mind.**

**I won't hold it against anyone who complains, as I'd be likely to do the same, so if you want to vent, go for it, I'm a big boy I can take it. Furthermore I do sincerely appreciate the kind comments and honest critiques this has garnered since I started writing this story and, last of all, because I don't really have any better way of expressing it, I'm sorry I couldn't live up to expectations.**

**Thank you for reading, and once again, I'm sorry.**

**EDIT:  
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**Reviewer Minor Itch has suggested someone else take over. If anyone feels particularly up to doing so, by all means, if you wish to do so, proceed with my blessing. I certainly won't kick up a fuss if someone does take over.**


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